Storm Breaking [112-066-4.8]

By: Mercedes Lackey

Synopsis:

 As Storm Breaking opens, the western allies, led by Karal, Karsite Sunpriest and delegate to the Valdemaran Court, and the Adepts Firesong and An'desha, have traveled deep into the Dorisha Plains to locate the ancient ruins of the Tower of Urtho, to locate the ancient ruins of the Tower of Urtho, Mage of Silence, creator of the gryphons. Legend has it that below the Tower, deeply buried beneath the plains, is Urtho's
Vault, hidden stronghold of some of the most powerful magical weapons ever devised -weapons that Urtho himself felt were too dangerous to use.
With the help of the Shin'a'in plainsmen, they have successfully excavated this ancient arsenal, and risked their lives triggering one of these antique but potent tools of death to unleash a monstrous burst of mage-energy. With this explosion of magical power, Karal, Firesong, and their companions have temporarily counteracted there ever-increasing waves of the mage storms. But they know that his desperate action will not save them. They have brought themselves precious time, but are still far from a permanent solution. They know now that the mage storms are an echo through time of the prehistoric Cataclysm which destroyed Urtho's Tower, created the vast barren Dorisha Plains, and permanently warped their world more than two thousand years ago. And they also know that if they don't find a way to banish these magical vibrations they will culminate in another Cataclysm, this time destroying their world for good. But the vault is not the only thing buried for centuries below the Dorisha Plains, and camped in the ruins of what once was the work place of the most ingenious mage their world has ever know, the desperate allies soon come to realize that their solution may lie beneath the dust at their feet. The saving of their world might be accomplished by the work of a man who has been dead for millennia!
_

Storm Breaking includes black and white illustrations by Larry Dixon.

Also from Orion Millennium

THE MAGE WARS with Larry Dixon The Black Gryphon The White Gryphon

THE MAGE STORMS

Storm Warning Storm Rising

Altra and Florian

An Orion Book London

Copyright @ I996 Mercedes R. Lackey

All rights reserved

The right of Mercedes R. Lackey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act I988.

First published in Great Britain in I996 by Millennium An imprint of
Orion Books Ltd Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin's Lane, London WC2H 9EA

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN (Csd) I85798 276 2 ISBN (Tpb) I85798 275 4

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Dedicated to the memory of Elsie B. Wollheim

One

Karal lay as quietly as he could, keeping his breathing even to avoid jarring his head… He kept his eyes closed against the light, hoping that the snow pack across his brow would eventually ease his throbbing headache. It was hard to think through the pain that stabbed from both temples and seemed to meet just above his nose. He was only vaguely aware of the rest of his body, muffled as it was in blankets, with hot stones packed all around to keep him from getting cold. The Shin'a'in who tended him seemed particularly concerned that he not take a chill from the clammy stone floor or the snow packs on his head. If this had been Valdemar, or even Karse, there would have been other recourses to ease the fiery lances stabbing through his temples-but unfortunately it wasn't.

This half-melted ruin of an ancient tower held no such amenities as Healers or herbal pharmacopoeias, and he was going to have to make do with whatever their Shin'a'in allies could come up with, at least for the present. That meant willow tea and snow packs, and hope for the best.

I can always hope for the best. It could be worse. How much worse, though that was something he was not prepared to contemplate at the moment.

It was a headache of monumental proportions, which was only to be expected, considering that he had personally been the nexus-point for all of the energies of a weapon so powerful and unpredictable that not even the Great Mage who had ended the Mage Wars had dared to use it. It had required a magic-channel, a living channel. Either no one in Urtho's contingent of mages happened to be a Channel, or else the Mage of Silence hadn't wanted to risk the life of such a person in the use of this weapon-in either case, it had remained unused with a warning plaque advising against its use.

Or else he couldn't get any volunteers. Not that Karal could blame anyone for not volunteering. His first experience at being a Channel had been singularly unpleasant, but the second had been of a different order of magnitude altogether. He honestly didn't remember too much of what had happened to him, once the weapon had been activated. Both the
Hawkbrother Adept Firesong and the half-Shin'a'in An'desha had assured him that was all for the best, and he believed them.

When both An'desha and Firesong agree on something... He had the shivery feeling that he really didn't want to know exactly what had happened. If he knew, he'd have to think about it, and that gave him a very queasy feeling.

It was much easier to lie in his bedroll and deal with pain than to think.

Occasionally the sounds of the others, moving about in their daily chores, made their way past the pain, oddly muffled or magnified by the strange acoustics of the place. An'desha and the Shin'a'in shaman Lo'isha were talking softly, their voices blending together into a meaningless murmur, as oddly soothing as wind in leaves or the whisper of water over rocks.

Someone, probably the Kaled'a'in kestra'chern Silverfox, was cleaning cooking utensils; soft metallic clinks punctuated the soft sounds of conversation. Nearer at hand, the Hawkbrother Firesong sang absently to himself; Firesong was probably mending something. Firesong always sang when he was mending something; he said it was to keep him from saying something he would regret. He didn't much care for mending, or for any other chores-the Tayledras Adept had been used, all his life, to being waited on. Having to fend for himself was an experience that Firesong was not enjoying. On the whole, Karal was of the opinion that he was bearing up well under these pressures and added responsibilities.

So much for the human members of the group. And as for the ones who were not human-well, Karal knew where Altra the Firecat was. The furry, vibrating blanket covering him from neck to knee was Altra, not some arcane Shin'a'in cover let. Somehow, unlike mortal cats which would inexplicably increase their weight when lying on a human, the Firecat had decreased his, making himself no heavier than a thick woolen blanket. Only the steady radiating warmth and the deep, soothing purr betrayed his presence.

Somewhere beyond the chamber where Karal was lying, one of the horselike creatures known to the Valdemarans as a Companion, the one called Florian, listened attentively to An'desha and the shaman. If Karal opened his mind a little, he would "hear" the voices that were only a vague music to his real ears, but he would hear them through the senses of the Companion. The bonds between himself and the Companion and Firecat were stronger now than only weeks ago. He had only to think of them to sense the whisper of their thoughts, and he was aware of their presence in his mind as a constant warmth. Something had happened during the time he could not remember that bound the three of them even more firmly together. Anything they saw, heard, or felt, he could experience himself if he chose. He didn't know if the reverse was true, but he rather thought it wasn't. He was the one who'd been changed, not them.

That was another thing he didn't want to think too closely about. The
Firecat was not entirely a mortal creature, and the Companion, while mortal enough, like the Firecat was a human reborn into a body of magical nature. So if something had happened that bound him to them-and so very tightly that he no longer had to work to reach their minds-He shivered, and the cold he felt had nothing to do with the snow pack on his head. Oh, no. I can't have changed that much. This is probably just temporary, something that will go away when I'm stronger.

He redirected his thoughts and noticed that at least now he could think coherently.

That's an improvement anyway.

Now where was everyone else? He kept his eyes closed and listened carefully, trying to locate them all by sound alone rather than take a chance that opening his eyes would wake the pain again.

The remaining nonhumans, the two gryphons, were busy packing up their few belongings. They muttered to each other with little hisses and beak clicks, and their talons scraped against the leather of the saddlebags they had borrowed from the Shin'a'in for their journey north. They had decided that they had been away from their twin offspring long enough, and no one in the group was heartless enough to insist that they stay.
The thrill of walking where the fabled Black Gryphon had once walked was probably beginning to pall in the face of being away from their beloved little ones for far too long. And with the Gates down, it would be a long trip back, even for creatures that flew.

And it could very well be that coming as close as we all did to getting seriously hurt, Treyvan and Hydona have decided that they don't want to leave their little ones as orphans.

Who could blame them for that?

Yes, he was definitely able to think more coherently now.

Coherently enough to notice my neck muscles are in knots.

Hardly a surprise. Karal sighed a little, and relaxed tense shoulders into the embrace of his sheepskin-covered pack, which was now serving him as a pillow. It's a good thing that I have clothing in there instead of books. The snow pack was working after all; if he noticed that his shoulders hurt, that meant the headache wasn't overwhelming everything else.

Grand, so now I get to enjoy how much the rest of me hurts!

But as the pain behind his eyes eased, so, too, did the tension in his muscles, which were probably contributing to the pain of the headache in the first place. So annoying how all these things managed to feed back on each other!

Well, I'd be a poor Sun-priest if I couldn't make myself relax, now wouldn't I? Such relaxation techniques were part of every novice's training. You couldn't pray if you weren't relaxed; how could you keep your mind on the glory of Vkandis if you were being nagged by a cramp?
He patiently persuaded his rebellious body to behave itself, getting muscles unknotted that he hadn't even known were tight. As he did so, the ache in his head ebbed further, thus proving his guess that part of the headache was due to muscle tension.

That's better. That's much better. if his head would just let him be, he might actually begin to enjoy this invalid state, at least a little. For once he felt completely justified in lying abed and letting others take care of him; the depleted state of his entire body had convinced him that he had actually earned a rest.

And after all, it wasn't every day he had a Tayledras Healing Adept waiting on his every wish. How many people could boast of that? He couldn't even sigh without having Firesong ask him if he needed anything, a rather odd turn of events given that Firesong was the one used to being waited on.

He wasn't at all certain what prompted Firesong's attentiveness there were others who would certainly have played nursemaid if the Adept hadn't insisted on taking the duty-but the Hawkbrother did make a very good and considerate nurse.

I certainly wouldn't have expected that from him. It just doesn't seem like him at all.

Well, maybe it wasn't much like the Firesong he knew, but such a thought was as shallow as the flippant surface that was all the Hawkbrother would ever reveal to him, given a choice.

He immediately chided himself for that thought.

That was unworthy as well as unkind. There is far more to Firesong than
I will ever see. We are all trying to cope with extreme situations, and if that is the way he chooses to cope, he has a right to it. Just at the moment, even when his head wasn't splitting, Karal was in no shape to do anything other than wonder and enjoy the attention. He could hardly move his hand without tiring himself, and simply getting to his feet to go to the privy area left him so exhausted, he could only lie in his bedroll and doze for marks afterward. That worried him; unless he regained his strength soon, he would not be able to travel. If he couldn't travel, he wouldn't be able to leave with the others when they returned to Valdemar. The impatient gryphon parents were not going to wait for the others, but the humans could not wait much longer either. If they didn't leave now, they might be caught and trapped here by winter storms.

On the other hand... it might already be too late. The Gate that brought us here is down, and if I were a mage, I wouldn't chance reopening it. We might be stuck here until spring. Even under the best of conditions it's going to take an awfully long time to walk back.

So long, in fact, that returning home might be the very worst thing that they could do at this point. The solution to the problem of the
mage-storms he had depleted himself to Provide was, once again, a temporary solution only. This night be the very best place for them to work on a permanent answer. They certainly had resources here at their disposal that they wouldn't find anywhere else.

For one thing, the ancient weapon that they had used to cancel the
Storm-waves had been only one of several available to them, and it hadn't been anyone's first choice, only the one they understood the best. Perhaps one of the others would provide a better chance. The
Kaled'a'in had promised to provide a historian, a specialist in their own languages and the ancient writing they alone had preserved out of the Cataclysm.

Perhaps when he arrived, he would be able to provide better translations than the gryphons.

We haven't even begun to explore this place, yet this was the heart of the Mage of Silence's stronghold. He is said to have been the greatest there has ever been, with vast resources.

Can we really assume that we have seen all there is?

There might be other rooms here, rooms they hadn't found yet, that might hold more answers to their problem. Maybe they would be much better off by staying here and looking, or studying the remaining weapons. It was an option no one had suggested yet, but he wondered if they all weren't thinking about it, much as they would prefer to return home.

The main problem as I see it is that we don't have anyone with us from the mathematicians and the Artificers. That alone worried him; the last two stopgap measures had been created, at least in part, by Master Levy's group of clever logicians.

With the help of these scholars, all of them had been able to examine the problem from an original perspective. We need them. Firesong might not like them, but we need them.

He knew that with certainty; as if Vkandis Himself had placed that certainty in his heart, he was as positive of it as he was of anything in his life. This was not a problem that could be worked through unless all of the minds available contributed to the solution.

He sighed, and as he lifted a hand to move the snow pack off his eyes, he heard Firesong come to take it for him. The cold, damp weight lifted away. "Would you like a new one?" the apparently eternally-young mage asked.

He opened his eyes and shook his head--only a little, so as to avoid undoing the good that had been done. Firesong didn't look very much like a nurse; the incredibly handsome young mage had managed to pack a full wardrobe of his intricately styled, brilliantly decorated silk clothing into his single pack.

Karal could not imagine how he had done it. At the moment, he was all in muted silver-blues which, at least, made it possible for Karal to look at him without pain. From his precisely styled, silver-white hair to his immaculate leg wrappings, he was every inch the exotic mage and not at all servile. The amused smile he wore reassured Karal; if there had been anything really wrong with him, he was fairly certain Firesong would not be smiling.

"Not at the moment, thank you," he said, surprised at the rasp in his voice, as if he had been screaming until his vocal cords were raw. "You really don't-"

Firesong chuckled, surprising him. "Oh, there's a reason behind all of this," he replied with a smile. "You're ridiculously easy as a patient, and if I'm tending you, I don't have to do any of the more tedious chores." His voice took on the merest touch of arrogance. "I'd rather keep putting snow packs on your head than wash dishes, I assure you."

Karal had to laugh weakly. Now that sounded more like the Firesong he knew! "Oh, good," he said. "I was afraid that you'd suddenly been filled with the spirit of self-sacrifice, and I wasn't certain I could bear that for very long." Now Firesong laughed, and tossed his long silver hair over his shoulder. "Keep your tender sentiments to yourself, Karsite," he said mockingly. "Out of my own self-interest I want you to stay an invalid as long as possible, and if you keep saying things like that, I might be tempted to do something to keep you that way."

"You promise, but you never follow through," Karal retorted, surprising himself with his enjoyment of the exchange. "I think my tender hide is safe from you."

"You doubt?" Firesong's brow rose, and he raised his gaze to a point somewhere past Karal; probably listening to Florian, the Companion. His next words confirmed Karal's guess.

"Well, maybe you're right. A hoofprint in the middle of my face would not improve my looks-" He dropped his gaze to meet Altra's brilliant blue eyes. "-and I don't like the way that cat of yours is flexing his claws either." I wouldn't hurt you where it showed," Altra said dryly, into both their minds. "Silverfox might object to my alterations, however. But you would make a charming girl." Firesong's silver eyes widened in mock fear, but there was a tinge of respect in his look as well. "Remind me never to anger you, Altra. That's a bit vicious even as a joke." If I thought for a moment that you were serious, it wouldn't be a joke." The Firecat deliberately raised one paw and licked his flexed talons. Since Altra was the size of most large dogs, and his paws were correspondingly huge, those talons were wicked looking indeed.

"That's not very subtle, cat," Karal thought warningly, knowing Altra would hear him. "It wasn't meant to be subtle," the Firecat replied in his mind only. "There was a time when he contemplated injuring you. If he ever strays in that direction again, I want him to have something to think about." Karal kept his face straight as Altra imparted that choice bit of information, so he did not reveal a reaction. That was certainly news to him.

And now everyone seems determined to protect me! But Firesong was waiting for him to say something, so before the mage could ask what it was that made him look so odd, he raised a shaking hand to rub his eyebrow. "Cats. You can't live with them, and the fur's too thin for a rug." Altra gave an exaggerated snort of disgust as Firesong laughed aloud. "You are feeling better," he said, this time without the mockery. "Good. Maybe tonight you'll be able to stomach something besides that tasteless slop the shaman has been feeding you. Just try not to get well so quickly that I'm forced to wash my own plates again any time soon."

Before Karal could reply, Firesong rose to his feet to take away the dripping snow pack. He turned his head slowly to look in the direction of Florian and the others.

Sure enough, a little way past the chamber's entrance, Florian stood with his head just above An'desha's shoulder, looking at something the shaman was drawing on the floor.

He could, if he just relaxed a little, see everything from Florian's point of view. He didn't want to relax that much, honestly.

I just want my headache to stop. I want to be able to get up and do things like the others. I truly do want to stop being a burden. It isn't the place of a priest of Vkandis Sunlord to be the one given comfort, it is the priest's place to give comfort ... He closed his eyes, and tried to find some meditation technique that would at least enable him to sleep despite the pain.

If he fell asleep, at least he wouldn't be quite so aware of what a nuisance he'd become.

Without any warning footsteps, he felt a touch on his arm. His eyes popped open, all he could manage in the way of a startled reaction.

He found himself looking up into a pair of extremely blue eyes, amused eyes, in a triangular face with golden skin. The eyes and the face topped a body wearing Shin'a'in garments of unornamented dark sable-brown; the color, he now recalled, that Swordsworn usually wore when they weren't engaged in one of their rare but vicious blood-feuds.

The Swordsworn had another name. Kal'enedral. The ones Sworn to the service of Kal'enel, the Warrior. He knew more about them now than any Karsite alive. The person sitting lightly on "his" heels would be one of the Swordsworn who had guided them here and guarded them on the way; who had, with the aid of k'leshya, excavated a way into the Tower.

He couldn't tell if this person was male or female; with the Swordsworn, it hardly mattered, since they were not only vowed to chastity and celibacy, but were by their bond to their Goddess, rendered incapable of a sexual impulse. That was a state that had no parallel in the Sunlord's hierarchy; although Sun-priests were not encouraged to wed, they were not denied that state either.

"Well, this was not what we intended when we opened our secret to you, young outclansman," the Shin'a'in said, in a clear, slightly roughened tenor voice that could have belonged to a man or a woman. The Sworn One spoke with very little accent ' in remarkably good Valdemaran. Karal was relieved; his Shin'a'in was rudimentary at best. "We thought you would be here and gone again-" The Shin'a'in paused then, as if suddenly realizing "gone" very nearly had been "permanently gone." 

Karal shrugged. "This wasn't our plan either, Sworn One," he said politely.

The Shin'a'in laughed. "True enough, and I think not even your God could have predicted this outcome. Certainly our Goddess did not! Or if She did, She saw fit not to grace us with the information. But now-well, given that the Gate that brought you here is gone, and our winter storms are closing in, we have determined that we will have to become true hosts." At one point, Karal would have been shocked by the reference to a deity other than Vkandis Sunlord-more shocked that such a deity as the Shin'a'in Star-Eyed was spoken of in the same breath as He. Later, he would have been able to accept that, but would also have been driven speechless by such a casual reference to a deity, as if the person speaking had a personal relationship with Kal'enel.

Now he knew better; these Swordsworn did have such a relationship. She had been known to speak with Her special followers on a regular basis, and even occasionally intervene in their lives. Which was, after all, not entirely unlike the relationship Vkandis had with the Son of the Sun.

"I have been told that affairs were at such a turning point that any and all outcomes were equally likely," he said carefully, squinting around his headache. "Perhaps that is why She gave you no indication that we were to be unexpected tenants rather than guests."

"Well said!" the Shin'a'in replied warmly. "Well, then. Tenants you are, dwellers among our tents, and as such it becomes necessary that we provide you with something better than the hasty arrangements of aforetime. First, I am Chagren shena Liha'irden, and I am to be your Healer. Lo'isha is a good man and a fine shaman, but his Healing skills are rudimentary at best. I am better suited to helping you, trust me in that." Karal could not help but show his surprise; a Healer among the Swordsworn? Chagren saw his expression and chuckled.

"Given our task of serving as the Guardians of the Plains, does it not seem logical that we must need a Healer now and again? I was a Healer before I was Sworn, and Swore myself in part because I was one of those who joined the battle with Ancar, and I vowed I would never again find myself unable to defend those who I had come to Heal. I petitioned. She accepted. Not all of us who come to serve Her so closely have tragic tales of great personal loss behind them." Then his expression changed, becoming serious for a moment. "Though there are many. Those who have seen too much to endure and remain sane often petition Her and are taken into Her ranks." Those who have seen too much to endure- Karal glanced involuntarily at An'desha, and Chagren followed his glance.

He looked back down at Karal. "Interesting. Your thoughts on that one?"
Karal blinked at the Shin'a'in's directness. "I sometimes wonder if there is any place for An'desha, after all he has endured."

Chagren lost that amused smile entirely, and his eyelids dropped momentarily to veil his eyes. "There is," he said after a pause, "if he chooses to take it. Among us there is no tale so strange that we cannot encompass it. Not among the Sword sworn, I think. but among the Wise, those who wear the blue of the night sky and the day's ending. They are
Sworn to Wisdom rather than the Sword, and I think it is among their numbers he would feel he has come home. But that is for him to decide."
The smile returned. "Meanwhile, it is for me to ease some of your discomfort, while my fellows bring the wherewithal to make this into a home for as long as may be. So. You have been Healed before?"

"Not really," Karal confessed. "The one Valdemaran Healer I saw decided that all I needed was herbs and potions, not real Healing."

"A wise Healer knows when to Heal and when to let time do the Healing,"
Chagren replied with approval. "Well then; this time you shall be the recipient of true Healing, such as, I believe, some of your Sun-priests are known to practice. I require of you only that you close your eyes and relax, and that when you sense my spirit, permit it to touch yours.
That should be easy enough, yes?

"I think so," Karal replied as the headache returned with a vengeance.
Any reluctance he might have felt vanished at the onslaught of further pain. He closed his eyes as instructed, and waited, slowly willing each muscle to release its built-up tension.

The moment he "sensed" Chagren's spirit he knew exactly what the
Shin'a'in had meant; he felt something very akin to the sensation he had when he first communicated with Florian.

And as he had when Florian had requested that Karal "let him into his mind," he let down those internal barriers he hadn't realized existed back when he had been plain Karal of Karse.

But this time, instead of thoughts and sensations flooding into his mind a warm, soothing wave washed over him, and where it had passed, the pain was gone, leaving behind comfort and reassurance.

He opened his eyes; he thought it was only a moment later, but Chagren was gone. In his place stood a metal pitcher and cup, and in his chamber and the rooms beyond, new comforts and a few new figures had appeared as if conjured.

There was a small cast-metal stove at his feet, and he had been heaped with more woven blankets. Several long, flat cushions arranged like a more comfortable bed than the one he currently occupied lay beside that. On top of the stove, there was a steaming pot. Beyond his room, he saw at least one more stove and reckoned that there were probably more. Better bedding had appeared, and more amenities.

Firesong appeared and glanced in the door to his chamber, and when the mage saw that he was awake, the Hawkbrother walked unhurriedly and gracefully to his side.

"You've been asleep through all the excitement," Firesong told him. "More of those Kal'enedral appeared with a veritable caravan of goods, and this place is now almost civilized." He smiled, and there was no mistaking the fact that he was pleased. "They even promised none of us will have to cook anymore, though we will still have to do the work of hertasi, I fear. That is just as well, since I do not believe I could have eaten another of my own meals, even if I died of starvation." 

Karal croaked a chuckle, and discovered to his delight that it did not make his head hurt. "My headache is gone!" he exclaimed with glee.

Firesong nodded. "That fellow Chagren said it would be. I will probably be helping him the next time he Heals you. He told me what had caused your aching skull, and once he explained it to me, it was obvious-" He held up a hand, forestalling Karal's questions. "-and I will explain it all to you in detail, some time later, when we have the time for me to explain how and why a mage or a Healer is able to do what he does. Suffice it for now to say that you have misused that part of you that channels magic, as if you had bruised it by battering a rough stone around inside your skull, and that was why your head hurt. He was able to take care of the bruises, so to speak."

Karal tried to lever himself up, and found to his profound disappointment that he was still as weak as a newborn colt. "Too bad I'm not completely back to normal, but I suppose Chagren can't Heal everything at once," he answered with a sigh, as Firesong caught his elbow to help him.

"Obviously, he cannot," the mage replied reasonably. "There are some things, such as strength and endurance, that time will restore as much as he. Now, if you will move thus, and so, we will get you onto this more comfortable bed, and then you must drink what he left you, and eat, and then sleep again. For the next couple of days, making your way to the privy and back will be all the exercise you're fit for."

With Firesong's aid, Karal moved over to the pile of flat bed cushions, which turned out to be even more comfortable than they looked. The mage piled all of his blankets, rugs, and furs back on top of him, then handed him the metal cup. It proved to contain another herbal potion, but this one had a pleasantly fruity, faintly sweet taste, with a refreshingly astringent aftertaste that quenched a deep-lying thirst no amount of water had been able to satisfy. At Firesong's urging, he drank a second cup, and while he finished that, An'desha appeared with a bowl and spoon.

"Chagren promised that you would at least be able to feed yourself, so that is your task for the day," An'desha said, handing him both. The bowl held real soup, not the tasteless gruel that Lo'isha had been feeding him. Although his hand shook a little, he managed not only to feed himself, but to finish every drop in the bowl. An'desha and Firesong sat watching him like a pair of anxious nursery attendants all during the meal, and An'desha took back the empty bowl with a grin of triumph.

"Soon enough you will be sweeping and washing with the rest of us,"
An'desha said as he rose. Karal leveled a sober gaze on Firesong as the young Shin'a'in left the chamber.

"I feel as if I should be sweeping and washing for both of you, you and
Silverfox together," he said with guilt he could not conceal. "I am taking up so much of your time, and contributing nothing."

"Now," Firesong replied sternly, "that says nothing of what you have done in the past, or will do in the future. And you are taking up very little of my time, since you sleep a great deal. Which is, by the by, what you should be doing now; sleeping, once you have another cup of this excellent beverage. Obediently, Karal drank down a third cup and closed his eyes again, although he felt no real urge to sleep. But evidently there was something in the drink, or he needed sleep so badly that his body would take any opportunity to seize some, for No sooner had he closed his eyes and begun the first stages of his ritual of relaxation, than he was fast asleep.

Firesong waited until he was certain young Karal was deep in dreaming, then gathered up the now-empty pitcher, bowl, and cup and carried them off to be washed. The chamber through whose outer wall they had entered the Tower had been dedicated to cleaning-everything from pots to people. Judicious use of magic on Firesong's part had driven a pipe to the surface; at the surface was a black-enameled basin connected to the pipe that the Shin'a'in kept filled with snow. No magic melted the snow shoveled into the basin, just the sun supplemented by a simple horsedung fire. The pipe slanted down into the chamber where it was closed by a stopcock taken from a wine barrel, and simply turning the stopcock gave them water enough for about any purpose. Waste water went into a second pipe going down into the earth set just outside in the tunnel. So far, it had been sufficient.

Silverfox was at the washing basin, used both for dishes and clothing, and he felt a stab of guilt of his own that the kestrachern should be wasting his time and talents on so menial a task as cleaning dirty dishes. This seemed as unreasonable a task as to ask a fine sculptor to shovel snow, yet there he was, serenely working away the soil of camp life with his slender fingers.

But the handsome Kaled'a'in looked up and smiled at his approach, and said lightly, "Would that all troubles are so easily washed away as these. All things considered, I have actually been enjoying myself on this little jaunt. I could almost feel that I am on holiday here!"

Firesong handed him the dishes with a groan. "Why do I suddenly have the sinking feeling that you are one of those benighted individuals who thinks that taking himself off to the utter wilderness for a fortnight or more constitutes a holiday?"

"What?" the kestra'chern replied innocently. "And you do not?" His blue eyes twinkled as he continued. "Think of the splendid isolation, the uncrowded vistas, the joy of doing everything for yourself, knowing you need rely on no one else! Self-sufficiency! Feeling yourself unconstrained by all the rules and customs that can come to smother you!"

"Think of the lack of civilized conversation, the dearth of entertainment, the deprivation of decent food, hot baths, and reasonable sleeping accommodations!" Firesong retorted. "I had rather endure a bored little provincial courtier babble for an hour than listen to a brook do the same, while my toes are cold and my nose even colder, and there isn't a cushion to relax upon. And I do not particularly take joy from washing dishes and mending clothing, I promise you. Those are tedious tasks at best, and wasteful of valuable time at worst!" But Silverfox's clever, sharp features softened for a moment.

"For you, perhaps, but unless he is in a circumstance like this one, a kestra'chern is never free of the needs of others. For you, this place is an exile, but for me, a holiday in the wild is an escape."

Now Firesong suffered another twinge of guilt, and he sat down beside the washtub. "And even here you are not free of demands," he said, reproaching himself. "For there are my demands on you-" But Silverfox only laughed, and shook his long black hair back over his shoulders. "No, those are not demands, ashke, those are mutual desires. I could say that my demands on you are as improvident, but I won't. But there is this-for once, I can act on my own desires rather than concentrate on the needs of another to the exclusion of anything I feel." Firesong felt the guilt for this, at least, lift away from him.

"I... make you feel more free, simply by being as I am? In that case, perhaps I should be more demanding!" The kestra'chern laughed, as the two gryphons, loaded with their travel packs, poked their beaks into the cleaning chamber with curiosity.

"Why all the rrreveln-ry?" Treyvan demanded." Arre potsss ssso amusssing?"

"That depends on who is cleaning them, old bird," Silverfox replied. "Are you ready to depart yet?"

The female gryphon, Hydona, nodded vigorously. "Now that morrre help hasss come, yesss. If I werrre young and unpairrred, I would ssstay, but-"

"But nothing," Firesong said firmly, reacting to the anxious tone of her voice, sensing she was afraid that he would demand that she stay. "Your little ones need you far more than we do. Not that we aren't grateful."

"When the keeper of hissstorry comesss, we will be sssuperfluousss anyway." Treyvan admitted. "He will be able to rrread the old wrritingsss here much morrre clearrly than we." It was obvious to
Firesong that the gryphons were chagrined at their inability to decipher the ancient texts that had been found here, and they took their failure personally. They had all made an incorrect assumption about clan k'leshya. They had assumed that the last clan that could truly have called itself Kaled'a'in rather than Shin'a'in or Tayledras had a purer form of the original tongue than either splinter group. Given that, the gryphons should have been able to decipher the ancient texts. And they had also assumed that since k'leshya had come to dwell among the Haighlei, a people who shunned change, their language would obviously have remained as pure as it was the day that they all went through the Gates to escape into the West.

But while the Haighlei shunned change, the Kaled'a'in had not, and their language had drifted from the ancient tongue as inevitably as had Shin'a'in and Tayledras. Perhaps it had not drifted so far or so fast, but nevertheless, it had drifted, and in a direction that rendered the ancient writings as vague to the gryphons as to Firesong or Lo'isha.

However, providentially enough, there was among the pioneers of k'leshya an individual who had not only come along to record what transpired in their new home, but one who had made a hobby of studying the most ancient scripts. While this historian was not the expert that a true scholar of the earliest days of White Gryphon would have been, he had volunteered to come and assist the party at the Tower, and he should prove more of an expert than the two gryphons.

That was the theory anyway. Very little in this strange situation had gone according to theory.

"I will be sorry to see you leave," Firesong said sincerely,

"You both have been very patient about this, but even I can tell that
gryphons aren't comfortable underground." Hydona didn't say anything,
but Treyvan shivered, all of his feathers quivering. "It hasss not been
easssy," he admitted.

"And all that hasss kept me here at timesss isss the knowledge that the
grrreat Ssskandrranon walked thessse sssame chamberrsss." Firesong
nodded with understanding; not that long ago, he would have said the
same thing in the same reverent tones about visiting the Heartstone
Chamber in the Palace at Haven where his own ancestor Vanyel had once
worked. That, however, had been before he had been kidnapped by that
same ancestor and shoved, willy-nilly, into the affairs of the Kingdom
of Valdemar. Being conscripted by a stubborn spirit to the aid of a
place and people that were hardly more than misty history to him had
given him a slightly more jaundiced view of "honored ancestors" than
most folk had.

Oh, I'll leave them to their illusions. Skandranon is not likely to
stick his beak into our affairs now, thank the gods;

if he was going to show up the way Vanyel did, he'd be here already. If
that was all it took to help them bear the feeling of being buried alive
here, their illusions are valuable.

Besides, Skandranon had died peacefully, in extreme old age, surrounded
by a vast flock of worshipful grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
There were no stories of a haunted forest in which uncanny things
happened connected with his legends, and his long line of descendants
had legends of their own.

But Firesong couldn't help but wonder now and again just what his own
ancestor Vanyel was planning. He'd given no indication that he planned
to-as it were-move on, once the dual threats of Ancar and Falconsbane
had been dealt with. By now he must have recovered from the effort of
taking down the Web-and Vanyel at full strength had been powerful enough
to wrest away control of a Gate he had not erected to transport five
humans, four gryphons, a dyheli, two Companions, and two bondbirds all
the way from a site at the edge of the Dhorisha Plains to the heart of
the Forest of -Sorrows beyond Valdemar's northern border. There was no
telling what he might still be capable of.

I think I know why he didn't confront Falconsbane directly but I would
not have given odds in favor of Falconsbane if Vanyel-and Yfandes and
Stefen-had been given leave to deal with him themselves.

"Do we take it that you arrre ssstaying, then?" Treyvan asked.

Both Firesong and Silverfox nodded, but it was Silverfox who answered.
"That's why that caravan of Swordsworn showed up with all the new
equipment. We just now told Karal, but that is only because he hasn't
been awake long enough to listen to anything complicated. The
Kal'enedral pointed out that we were lucky that we didn't encounter any
winter storms coming in, but we can't count on our luck holding.

If we're caught, we would have to do what the Shin'a'in do---dig in.
hope we don't freeze to death, then settle in for the rest of the
winter. Once the trail out is obliterated by a storm, there's no
reestablishing it. If we're going to be stuck, I'd rather be stuck here, where we can continue to research what Urtho left behind. I'm looking for secret doors, or concealed rooms, while the rest figure out what the effect of the cancellation wave we sent out will be, and how long it will last."

"I think you are wissse," Treyvan said gravely. "I do not think that
Karrral would sssurrvive the tn-rip, much lessss a grreat sstorrm .

"Nor do I, and that was why I voted to stay," Firesong said, then added
with a sigh. "Even if it means living like a brigand until spring."
Treyvan gryph-grinned at that, and gave him a mock cuff with a tightly
fisted claw. "Peacock!" he chuckled. "You arrre jusst dissscontented
becaussse therrre isss no one herrre but Sssilverrrfox to admirrre
yourrr handsssome face!"

"No, I am just discontented because I am not especially fond of sewing
split seams and scrubbing pots, which is a perfectly reasonable
attitude," Firesong retorted, and made shooing motions with his hands.
"Be on your way; I'm sure you can't wait to get back to cries of 'but
Papa said we can!', 'But Andra's mama lets her!', and 'do I have to?'" When he wished to exercise that talent, Firesong could be a wicked mimic, and he so accurately rendered a childish whine that both gryphons' eartufts went back in alarm.

"Perrrhapsss Hydona could go ahead of me," Treyvan ventured, then ducked as his mate leveled a killing gaze on him, "orrr perrrhapsss not. Well, why not; we faced Ancarrr, we faced Falconsssbane, we faced the Imperrrial Arrrmy and the mage-ssstormsss. What arrre two merrre
childrrren againssst that?"

"Worse than all of them put together, because they'll always get what
they want?" Firesong suggested, and Hydona turned her deadly glare on
him. "Of course, my opinion is hardly valid!" he amended hastily. "After all, I don't have children!" Hydona snorted, but looked mollified, and Firesong wisely opted to keep the rest of his opinions to himself. "We'll all miss you," he said instead. "But you've done more than your duty, and children need their parents. Fly safely, friends."

"Thank you," Treyvan said simply.

Even though the Shin'a'in had labored to open the hole in the outer wall to give them all a wider door into the tunnel, it was still a squeeze for the gryphons to get through, burdened With their packs as they were.

As a courtesy, Firesong sent a mage-light on ahead of them, though
Treyvan was perfectly capable of making his own. Not that they were
going to get lost in a straight tunnel, but the light might make the
tunnel itself seem less confining.

Silverfox sat looking after them for a while after they were gone. "You
know," he said finally, "they were the only creatures I ever envied when I was young."

"Gryphons in general?" Firesong asked. "Or those two in particular?"

"Gryphons in general," Silverfox replied, turning back to his dishtub.
"The main thing was that they can fly, of course, but besides that, they are just marvelous creatures. They grow their own wonderful costumes of feathers, they are armed better than any fighter with those talons and that beak, and they can take on virtually any task except those that require unusually fine dexterity. They can even become kestra'chern! So I envied them."

"And now?" Firesong asked. "Now I'm old enough and experienced enough to have seen the price they pay for all those gifts. You'd be amazed at how delicate their digestion is, they are devastated by certain diseases that are only an inconvenience to a human, and their joints tend to stiffen up and get quite painful as they age. I'm still of divided opinion about whether or not the drawbacks are worth being a gryphon," he added, "but I no longer envy them."

"I never did," Firesong said softly. "I only envied myself," and left it at that.

...and the Mage of Silence brought all of the armies back to his
stronghold here, in Ka'venusho," Chagren said, pointing with his
charcoal stick to the appropriate place he had drawn on the floor. Karal nodded, and concentrated fiercely while Chagren related the rest of the history of the Mage Wars. He'd heard it all once from Lo'isha, of course, but Chagren had actually experienced a compressed version of
this history. That had been during a special moment in his training,
when he went to Kata'shin'a'in and entered a holy building that housed
something he called the Webs of Time. Karal's grasp of language was not
quite good enough to give him a clear idea of what physical forms these
Webs were in, but Chagren said that they held the memories of those who
had made them, and that under certain specific conditions, those
memories could be awakened and experienced. Karal was disposed to
believe him; after all that he had seen. what was one more supernatural
marvel?

The gryphons had already given him their own version of the story, more
heavily weighted with the heroism of the Black Gryphon, of course. Even
Silverfox had a slightly different tale, as handed down among the
Kaled'a'in kestra'cherns from Amberdrake, Tadrith Wyrsabane, and the
generations since them. so that is why this place was hallowed for us,
even before we know there still were working weapons here," Chagren
finished. "Mind, I said hallowed, not holy. We of the Plains do not
count any human 'holy," not even Her Avatars or the Kal'enedral. The
Mage of Silence was a good man, a fine man, and flawed as all men are.
What made him different from most other men was that he saw his
weaknesses and spent all his life trying to keep them controlled, so as
not to harm others with them; that he devoted a larger percentage of his life to the well-being of others than most ever even think of doing.

What made him dangerous were the things he never troubled to control:
his curiosity and his desire to meddle and change things for the sake of change itself." Karal digested that; it was interesting to hear the
various versions, not only of the story of the Cataclysm, but the way
the three cultures viewed Adept Urtho. To the gryphons, at least, Urtho
was the ultimate Great Father, which was hardly surprising, since they
knew he had created them; to Silverfox he was both a familiar figure of
history and a figure of semi-veneration, less than a god but far more
than human. To the Tayledras, he was a figure of the misty past, and
they recalled very little of him; most did not even know his name, and
called him only 'The Mage of Silence'. To most Shin'a'in he was not
even that-Except to the Kal'enedral. To them, he was a man; powerful,
good of heart and soul, but one who could not resist meddling in things
he should never have touched. Without a doubt. that was because their
version was flavored with their own form of prejudice against magic.
Even Chagren was not immune from that prejudice, though he suffered from it less than some.

The Shin'a'in had been assigned the guardianship of the Plains by their
Goddess Herself, although most of them were not aware that there really
was something here that needed to be guarded from interlopers.
Certainly, being a Goddess, She could simply have removed the weapons
and dangers entirely had She chosen, but deities work in ways that are
often not obvious even after centuries of scrutiny. It must have taken a direct edict from the Shin'a'in Goddess to get her chief servants, the Kal'enedral, to open the Plains and this Tower at its heart to
strangers. He could hardly imagine what their reaction must have been to learn that they would be opening the Tower to mages.

Their faith must be very great, he thought, with wonder.

Look how long it took me to accept that Heralds and Companions were not
demonic-they gave over their fears in a much shorter time.

Or if they had not given up their fear, they had certainly worked past
it. He had encountered no hostility from these people, only the wariness he himself felt, faced with strangers from a strange people.

Then again, perhaps the Kal'enedral had been very careful about which of their folk were permitted to aid the foreigners.

"I could do with a little less change myself," he said with a weak
laugh. "But the mage-storms aren't giving us much of a choice in that."
Chagren grimaced, his aquiline features making the expression more
pronounced. "Yet another mischance that some would lay at Urtho's door.
Had he not made the choices he did, some would say that none of this
would be happening now." Interesting choice of words. Could it be that
Chagren is taking a wider view of things? "But not you?" Karal asked
delicately.

Chagren looked for a moment as if he was not going to answer, then
shrugged. "But not me. I am not certain that Urtho's great enemy Ma'ar
would not have unleashed worse upon the world; after all, look what
havoc Falconsbane and Ancar wrought, who were lesser mages than Ma'ar.
Then again, my leshy'a teachers had... experience with mages." Now
that was a new word; he thought he vaguely recognized the root.
Something about a soul. "What kind of teachers?" he asked, to test his
guess.

"I suppose you'd call them 'spirits' although they can be quite solidly
real if She wishes," Chagren replied matter-of-factly, as if he spoke
with ghosts every day. Well, perhaps he did.

"At some point in the lives of most Swordsworn they encounter one or
more leshy'a Kal'enedral. There have even-" He broke off his words, and
stared past Karal for a moment, and half-choked. His eyes widened, and
he gave a slight bow of his head. "I believe, Outlander," he said in an
entirely different and very respectful voice, "that you are about to
find out for yourself." Karal turned, to find that another of the
Swordsworn was standing in the doorway; this one was very clearly a
woman, but also very clearly a warrior in every fiber. She was dressed
entirely in black from head to toe, and wore a veil or scarf across the
bottom half of her face. A sword and long knife hung from her belt, and
she bore the weight easily, negligently.

In two paces she had crossed the chamber and stood at the side of
Karal's pallet, looking down at him.

She could have seemed frightening, intimidating from her clothing alone, and yet there was nothing menacing whatsoever about her. Competent, yes; certainly imposing-but Karal would have had no hesitation in trusting her. Her blue eyes above the black veil were both amused and kind, and he sensed that she was smiling.

"Forgive me that I can't rise to greet you properly, Lady," he said with deepest respect.

"Oh, not at all," she replied, and her voice had a very odd, hollow
quality to it, as if she were speaking from the bottom of a very deep
well. "As I understand it, you're rather indisposed at the moment." He
narrowed his eyes, as he began to see, or sense, that there was
something unexpected about her. She reminded him of something very
familiar; in fact, there was some indefinable aura about her that was
like-like-Sunlord!

She's-not" I must presume," he said carefully after a deep breath, "that Sworn Ones such as you who choose to instruct further generations
do not bother to take a physical vehicle such as a Firecat or a
Companion." She's a spirit, that's what she is! Like An'desha's Avatars, only more here. More real. He felt positively giddy at his own daring, looking a spirit right in the eyes like this, and speaking to her as an equal!

"Say rather, are chosen rather than choose, and you have it rightly,
young priest," the spirit replied, a hint of a chuckle in her hollow
voice. "Though I have to admit that She has toyed a time or two with the notion of Black Companions. Or perhaps, Black Riders." Since Karal could well imagine Florian's indignant response to that idea, he had to stifle a smile of his own. Black Companions? Oh, the Heralds wouldn't like that at all!

"I believe you've met a kinswoman of mine," the spirit continued." She
left her mark on you, which leads me to think that she regards you
favorably. She's a hard one to please." He tried wildly for a moment to
think of who the Kal'enedral could mean. "Ah-you-Querna?" he hazarded,
trying to imagine how that rather aloof lady could have left any kind of a mark on him.

The spirit laughed aloud at that. "No, young Clan-friend. Kerowyn. I see you've lined up anything that could serve as a weapon, hurled or otherwise, so that you can reach everything in the order you'd need it. That's the sort of 'mark' I mean. She's trained you so deep it's a habit." Startled, he looked down involuntarily and saw he'd done just that, with the things he'd have to throw at the farthest point of his reach and his dagger right at his elbow. He flushed.

What must Chagren be thinking now, that he distrusted them all? That
they had let a potential assassin into their midst?

"Oh don't be embarrassed, boy," the spirit chided gruffly.

"That's one of the best habits to be in. What if someone unfriendly got
in here? What if one of our more fanatical brethren decided that She had been deceived by you lot, and you all had to die? Don't you know what we say? Know where all the exits are. Never sit with your back to the door. Watch the reflections. Watch the shadows. Keep your hands free and your weapons loose." Sunlord! he thought desperately, I'm being bombarded with Shin'a'in proverbs! What a terrible way to die!

He meant that lightly, but it seemed that the Kal'enedral intended to
continue until she had recited every proverb on the subject of
self-defense that the Shin'a'in ever invented.

"Never sit down to eat with your sword at your side-strap it to your
back for a faster draw. Better an honest enemy than a feigned friend.
When-"

"Who is wisest, says least," he interrupted, desperate to cut through
what looked to be an unending stream of proverbs.

Were Shin'a'in all like that? Even Kerowyn tended to spout Shin'a'in
proverbs at the drop of a hint. And a spirit Kal'enedral probably knew
every proverb ever composed!

The spirit laughed aloud again. "Well said!" she applauded. "Keep that sense of humor, and you might just survive this.

Chagren, take special care of this one; he's deeper than he looks."
Chagren bowed low. "As you say, teacher," he replied.

Karal wasn't prepared for the spirit's departure; he barely blinked and
she was gone. A chill ran up his backbone, but he was determined not to
show it.

"If you see a Swordsworn in black with a veil," Chagren said slowly, "it is leshy'a. There have been some few here among the rest of us. We think they come to ensure your safety... or ours. It's debated which."

"It's more likely both," Karal said, feeling a bit dizzy. "Kerowyn's
kin to her?" Chagren shrugged. "So she says. That is something new to
me, but the leshy'a are not inclined to talk about their pasts.

Often we do not even know their names. She is my first teacher of the
sword, and came to me the night that I was Sworn-" He broke off what he
was saying to shake his head.

"I am babbling. And you, young outland priest, can consider yourself as
having passed a kind of examination. None of the Sworn are likely to
question your right to be here ever again." With that rather surprising
statement, he turned and left the chamber I leaving Karal alone with his thoughts, which were, to say the least, very complex.

Although there was one thought that was not at all complex.

So my right to be here will no longer be questioned. That's all very
well for me, but what about the others?

Firesong sighed as he regarded his much abused shirt with a frown. His
favorite sorts of garments were not meant for rough living and a camp
existence.

"Glaring at it won't put the hem back up," Silverfox remarked around a
mouthful of pins. "You might as well give up and do it the hard way."
Firesong growled under his breath, but took up needle and thread
grudgingly. "All very well for you to say," he complained," but you've
been able to trade off sweeping and scrubbing the sleeping room to
An'desha in return for cleaning his dishes. And you've traded Loisha
massages for cleaning and airing the bedding. I haven't got anything
anyone wants to trade for! Valdemar, barbaric as it was, is looking
better all the time!" Silverfox chuckled. "It could be worse; we could
still be eating your cooking. I believe that our kin-cousins are being
very generous in taking over the larger portion of the work." Firesong
growled again. "You only say that because you can do things even the
Kal'enedral are interested in. I'm a mage, that's all I know, and they
don't want a thing I can do for them!" Silverfox put down his needle to
look up at him with sympathy." You aren't just a mage. You are a lover,
but you are so exotic to them that they could more easily entertain
fantasies of bedding clouds. If there is really something you detest,
would you please tell me and let me do it, or barter a massage or
something to one of the Sworn and have him do it? You are a mage,
ashke, and I feel in my bones that soon enough you will have more
important things to worry about than hems and ripped seams." Firesong
started to reply, then shook his head and laughed at himself. "Why is it when you say things like that, you manage to deflate my self-importance rather than inflating it, and simply fill me with dread?" Silverfox merely tilted his head to one side, and replied,

"Do I?" Let's change the subject, he thought. I can do without too much
introspection. "Magic is working more reliably now that the counterforce is evening out the Storm-waves. It is still a horrid mess, but I think I can get a Gate up to the rim of the Plains soon; if I can do that, we can at least ask for a few more things to make life tolerable around here. How much would k'leshya be willing to part with in the way of amenities, do you think? I haven't had a real bath in weeks and neither has anyone else. A big tub would be very welcome, even if its real intention was to water horses. A copper boiler to heat water would be even more welcome." Silverfox looked thoughtful. "There might be a fair amount they could send us, both of leftover Tayledras gear and some of our own. And you know-if we could get a Gate open, we could get some hertasi volunteers to come through. They can't cross the Plains in winter without a great deal of hardship, and I wouldn't ask it of them. But they could come through a Gate, provided they were sure we could keep them warm enough over here." Firesong closed his eyes for a moment in longing. Oh, how he missed his little army of hertasi helpers! If he had just one or two, he wouldn't have to do another tedious chore for himself again. They loved to do exactly the sorts of things he wanted to avoid here, and could probably show even the natives some lessons in organization.

"Before we try that, we ought to see if we can find out what Sejanes and the rest back in Haven have found out about Gating," he replied, after another moment of cautious thought.

"Not that I wouldn't be willing to give up a lot for a couple of
hertasi, but I wouldn't want to put them at any risk. It's one thing to
toss a tub or a sack of meal through; it's quite another to-risk a
living being." Silverfox nodded, and bit off his thread. "Should we send Karal back if we can get a Gate up that's safe for a living creature?

He'd be better off with k'leshya." Once again, Firesong hesitated. Now
there's a question. He would be better off in a place where he could be
properly cared for, but-how many more of the devices here need a
Channel? What are we going to have to do in order to counter that final
Storm, the one that's the reverse analog of the original Cataclysm? "You can ask An'desha and Lo'isha if you like, but I have the sinking feeling we still need him. If he decides he's willing to stay here, we should let him." He took a few more stitches and knotted off his own thread. "I think he's going to insist on it. Sometimes that child makes me feel ashamed of myself. I sit here wailing and moaning because I have to pick up after myself, and he's fretting because he's too weak to help." He shook his head.

"Maybe that's why he's a priest and you're not," Silverfox said gently.
"He seeks to give of himself even when there's nothing left to give. It
hurts him, but it also makes him feel effective. We can't all turn out
that self-sacrificing. Lady knows I'm not-" He was interrupted by the
sound of someone running.

"Heyla, you two!" An'desha poked his head into their chamber." Come to
Karal's room. Altra made a jump to Haven and he's back with word from
Sejanes!" Both of them dropped their mending and got to their feet,
hurrying toward Karal's chamber-which once held the weapon that had
discharged all of its formidable power through him. Firesong hadn't
mentioned that to Karal yet; when they had elected not to move him, he
had deduced that since all the chambers looked alike, Karal probably
wouldn't notice which one he was in. I'm not sure how he'd react. He
might not care-or it might make him very nervous and unhappy, being in
the same room where he nearly died.

When they arrived at the chamber, they found Lo'isha, a few of the
Kal'enedral, Florian, and An'desha already waiting there, with Altra on
Karal's lap and an unopened message tube beside them.

Firesong blinked, and realized that after all the time of working with
the mages and Artificers back in Haven, he'd been unconsciously
expecting to see more people. So it's just us now. I don't know if I
like that. I hate to admit it, but those Artificers had some good ideas.

"I hope this message is written in Valdemaran, but it probably isn't,"
Karal said. "I know enough of Imperial tongue to translate, though, if
you want me to."

"Go ahead," Firesong said, motioning to him to pick up the tube. "I
don't even read Valdemaran that well; you're the best reader we have
except for Florian."

"And I can just picture Florian trying to unroll the paper!" Karal
chuckled, though Firesong noted that Florian came to look over Karal's
shoulder, probably to help with the translation.

If only Aya could read foreign tongues! he thought with envy. We could
each specialize in a language; it would be so convenient!

Karal broke open the tube and extracted a roll of paper; he unrolled it
with an accompanying crackling sound.

Evidently it was in Valdemaran; Karal's frown faded and he began reading immediately. Probably Florian was prompting him.

The letter began abruptly. "Greetings, and do not attempt to make or use a Gate. We have already tried and the results were Unfortunate. That's with a capital 'u' by the way." Firesong winced. I was afraid of that.

"Things must be more unsettled than we thought," An'desha said with
alarm. "My little magics have been working so well I thought certainly
that the larger ones must surely be all right.

"That might simply be a function of where we are," Firesong reminded
him. "For all we know, there are upper shields on the remains of the
Tower, strong enough that we could do almost anything in here and not be affected by what's gone on outside." Karal cleared his throat to get
their attention again. Firesong turned back to him and nodded, and the
young man continued." I fear this means you are exiled for the duration, colleagues. We built a small local Gate as soon as we could after you unloosed the power of your Device, and we attempted to transfer a few small nonliving items through it. I am glad now that we opted for caution and made those items of a nonliving nature, for the result on the other side was rather messy. Parts were recognizable, and that is the best I can say. Many suffered from desiccation, aging, or physical compression. Altra's jumping seems to cause no such problems for the moment, even when he 'carries' someone with him, but he reports that it is becoming more and more difficult to jump as time passes." At this, Altra himself raised his head and spoke up. "I find that the distance I can jump decreases as time passes. I am afraid that within a few weeks I will not be able to jump across a given distance any faster than a Companion could run across it." Firesong let out the breath he'd been holding in. I wonder if I ought to go back to k'leshya after all? I'm not sure I can continue to live like this and not begin to lose my
temper, if not my sanity. "Well, that's not welcome news," he said as
casually as he could. "Is there anything else?" Karal scanned the letter quickly. "Once the bad news is out, he gets a lot more formal and technical; the short version is that Altra can probably bring one or two people from Haven to here before he can't jump anymore, but that we need to work on a way to communicate with Haven-maybe using scrying Magic that doesn't transfer or move anything physical seems to work better than magic that does. I just hope that if there are shields protecting this place, they wouldn't interfere with scrying, too." He handed the letter over to Firesong. "Here, you can get all the details yourself later; most of what he says only partially makes sense to me."

"I'll study it later," Firesong promised. "The question now is, what are we going to do? If we're going to have Altra bring someone over, we'd better do it soon."

"If we can get them," An'desha said slowly, "Id like both Sejanes and
Master Levy here." Firesong rolled his eyes up at that, but had to
grudgingly agree. "If they'll put up with the unpleasantness of jumping, they would be the best choices." he sighed. "Sejanes has an entire magic discipline that is foreign to us, and Master Levy-" He paused for a moment, reminded himself to be charitable, and chose his words carefully. "Master Levy has a very unique way of looking at our
problems. If not him, then we should have at least one of the Master
Artificers here. Even I have to admit that we could not have
accomplished anything here without their help." An'desha and Karal both
nodded vigorously in agreement, which made him feel a bit sour, but he
had to admit that without the Artificers, they would be working without
a resource as valuable as the presence of an Adept. We need that utterly different viewpoint here. And Master Levy might even be as intelligent as he thinks he is.

Master Levy and Sejanes have already volunteered," Altra put in
unexpectedly. "I was just waiting to see if you would welcome them here. I can go back for them now, if you'd like, although it will take a few days to get there and back with them." Now Firesong was startled. A few days? Altra's jumping distances had been severely curtailed! "If it's going to take you days, I think you had better start back now," he told the Firecat." I don't want to think how much faster the situation could deteriorate if we wait." The Firecat nodded, and vanished from Karal's lap. Only Lo'isha looked at all dubious when Altra was gone.

"What's wrong, shaman?" Firesong asked politely, seeing Lo'isha's
troubled gaze.

The Shin'a'in shrugged. "I am only wondering if we should have asked
permission of our hosts before we brought more folk in. Hopefully, they
will not be offended by the addition of two more strangers." Curiously,
that slight objection had the effect of hardening Firestorms decision.
"If we'd had them here in the first place, we might have a permanent
solution instead of a temporary one," he said stubbornly. "I, for one,
want them here. Wind and weather, Lo'isha, if you're worried that they
might somehow overpower us and escape with secrets of Urtho's forbidden
magic, Master Levy doesn't know the first thing about practical magic,
and Sejanes is so old that if you spoke a harsh word to him all his
bones might break under the force!

They're hardly a threat, singly or together" "oh, I agree, but it is
not my opinion you must have," Lo'isha began, then shrugged again. "Or,
well, perhaps it is. I suppose I have as much authority here as the
Kal'enedral." He grimaced. "Much as I dislike taking on authority, I
suppose it is time that I did so." Since it was Firesong's opinion that
it was more than time that he did so, he simply nodded and held his
tongue.

Karal looked fatigued, and Firesong stood up abruptly. "I am going to
search for another hidden room. I have the feeling that this place
hasn't even begun to divulge its secrets to us.

Anyone care to join me? Urtho may have been one of the most brilliant
and compassionate minds in history but his architects were no small
geniuses themselves. Firesong already had found one small, hidden room
by carefully probing the floor of the "washing" room when he noticed
that water, dripped in a particular place, drained away through cracks
invisible to the unaided eye. It hadn't held anything-in fact, it had
probably performed the task of simple storage-but now he knew that there might be more such places under the floors here, and he had the feeling that if he just looked hard enough, he might find more than just storage areas. I'll help," An'desha said unexpectedly.

He smiled. "Come along, then," he replied. "I'm trying the skull chamber next." The "skull chamber" was the one in which they had discovered a bizarre contraption that looked like the leavings of half a dozen Artificers and shamans all jumbled together with the remains of a few feasts. The centerpiece was a highly ornamented cow skull, and none of them could even begin to guess what the device was for. They would have been afraid to dismantle it, except that the delicate construction had already fallen apart in several places already, and the shock of their magical working had made it fall completely to pieces without any other ill effect.

Rather than use magic, since the chamber itself reeked of mage-power,
Firesong was using perfectly ordinary senses; taking a cue from the
water drainage, he had a skin of water with a bit of ink in it to make
it more visible, and he dribbled it over the floor, watching to see if
it moved or vanished.

With An'desha helping, the two of them were a lot more effective than he was by himself. It was very boring work, and he had expected An'desha to start a conversation, but he had not anticipated the subject.

"You're thinking about going back, aren't you?" An'desha said. "To
k'leshya, if not your home Vale."

He didn't reply at first; he pretended to be paying close attention to
the water on the floor. "I'm not used to this sort of living," he said,
refusing to answer directly. "It's harder on me than it is on you."

"I won't debate that," An'desha agreed. "And I hope you don't think I'd
put any blame on you for leaving. The gryphons did."

"But they have two children who need them, he snapped.

"I don't. I haven't any excuse for leaving except wanting to be
comfortable again!" He felt irrationally irritated at An'desha for
voicing all of his excuses, as if he were so transparent that An'desha
had no difficulty in anticipating what he wanted to do and his
rationalizations.

The trouble was that every time he looked at Karal, he felt ashamed of
himself.

"It's not as if you haven't done more than most people would have
already," An'desha said gently. "First you faced down Falconsbane-"

"Mornelithe Falconsbane was a challenge, but no more than that," he
replied stiffly. "It's not as if I was alone in facing him."

"It's not as if you had any real reason to," An'desha pointed out
inexorably. "Valdemar wasn't your home. Falconsbane didn't threaten the
Vales. You'd done your duty in training Heralds to be mages, and then
some. You could have gone home once you'd done that much."

"Leaving whom to face Falconsbane?" Firesong demanded, his face
flushing. "One of those half -trained Heralds? Elspeth?

Darkwind, perhaps? None of them could have freed you. I'm not certain
even Need could have freed you and dealt with Falconsbane." An'desha
simply nodded quietly. "But when it was over-you could have gone home
then. You could even have taken me with you, and things might have
turned out differently.

You've long since gone past anything anyone could call your duty,
Firesong. No one would fault you if you were too tired of all this to go on."

"And how am I going to compare to someone like Karal if I do that?" he
demanded, flushing still further. "Too tired? How would I look, quitting now, next to someone who literally put his life in jeopardy over this?"

"You make him sound like a would-be martyr," An'desha chided. "Karal is
quite a few things, including stubborn, occasionally bigoted, and now
and then incredibly naive, but he's no martyr. And neither are you, nor
any of us."

"So?" Aya must have felt his distress; the firebird sailed in the
chamber door, adroitly avoided the snare of wires and junk, and landed
on his shoulder. He petted the bondbird reflexively in a blind search
for comfort. "If he's not a martyr, then-" He stopped, aware that his
voice was getting high and strained.

He took two or three deep breaths. "An'desha, I don't know why you're
baiting me this way." Then, in a moment of blinding insight, he did
know.

He's forcing me to think things through, so that I come to a real
decision, instead of letting some unfinished business and an entire
bundle of emotions sway me back and forth.

An'desha nodded, as if he saw all that written on Firesong's face.

I can't make a decision because I'm trying to demonstrate that I'm
somehow better than Karal. And I can't make it out of guilt either.

So why am I staying?

"What Karal does is up to Karal, but-well, I'm not too old to take a
youngster like him as a good example." He smiled weakly. "You all need
me, just as you need Sejanes or Master

Levy, or Altra. I'm staying because even though I'm tired and I hate
living here, it would be wrong of me to go off and leave you without my
skills. I don't want to die in the cold and filth, but if I must, I
will. It would be wrong to abandon all those people who are hoping we'll find a solution to the final Storm.

It would be wrong to break my word to the people I promised I would
help. Are those reasons good enough for you?" An'desha laughed at that.
"Don't think to bait me, Firesong; I was coached by an expert to steer
you through your own thoughts and motives." He scowled at that. "Are you happy with the result?" he growled.

"The question is not whether I'm satisfied, it's whether you are,
An'desha countered. "And if you are, it is not for me to object. If your decision will interfere with other concerns, then that must be dealt with then." He stood up and moved over to another section of floor.

Firesong felt an imp of perversity rise inside him, and he knew he had
to have the last word.

"And I didn't mention the best reason of all yet," he said silkily.
Surprised, An'desha turned back to face him.

"What reason is that?" he asked, as if the words had been pulled from
him unwillingly.

Firesong smiled. "Silverfox wants me to stay," he replied.

"Can you think of a better reason?"

Elspeth sighed, her breath streaming out in a fog of ice-crystals, and pulled the ends of the scarf wrapped around her neck a little tighter. Once again she sent a little thought of gratitude back over her shoulder toward Valdemar and the tireless k'leshya hertasi who had fashioned her current costume. The little lizard-folk who had arrived with the bargeload of envoys from Clan k'leshya had taken one look at her winter wardrobe and taken it upon themselves to refashion it, as if they didn't already have enough to do. The hertasi of k'sheyna had already made her Herald's Whites in the style of the Tayledras, but those had all been of summer-weight fabrics. These new hertasi had remade her Whites in wool, fur, and leather, layered in silk according to patterns designed for her by Darkwind.

These had been her Midwinter gift from him to her, and a welcome
surprise they had been indeed, for they were certainly needed. Winter
Field Whites had been designed for harsh weather, but not as harsh as
the unprecedented weather currently holding Hardorn in its icy grip.

And Hardorn was where she, Darkwind, and a small group of mixed
Valdemaran Guards and Kerowyn's mercenaries found themselves headed
shortly after Midwinter Festival.

There hadn't been much choice; it was clear that Valdemar was going to
have to send some form of envoy overland to Grand Duke Tremane, once it
became impossible to put up any more Gates. Elspeth had been present
when that last Gate had been attempted; the mangled crate that had come
through had looked as if it had been turned inside out, and nothing in
it was recognizable. It was just a good thing that the crate had only
contained a few things for Sejanes and that they had been cautious
enough to test the Gate with mere cargo before sending anyone living
through.

But travel to and within Hardorn was not easy by any standard, even
those of one who had journeyed from Valdemar to the Dhorisha Plains and
patrolled the weirdling lands being cleansed and protected by a
Hawkbrother Vale. In all of her life she had never seen snow this deep.
The road they followed into Hardorn had been kept clear for traffic, but only enough to permit a cart pulled by two horses to pass. And even
then, the wheels of the cart would scrape the walls of snow now and
again. Every ten leagues a wider place had been cut, so that carts going in opposite directions could pass, but otherwise the snow was piled up on either side of the road until it reached shoulder-high on a horse. In places where the snow had drifted deeper than that, it could be taller than a rider's head. And the cold, the wind-In many ways, she was grateful that those tall snowbanks were there, because without that
shelter they'd be facing a wind that bit as cruelly as any blade, and
carried right down to the bone. Hertasi-designed tunics with fur linings and riding coats of sheepskin with the wool turned inside were the only things that made this journey bearable. She was quite grateful that the mysterious, industrious lizard-folk had been able to outfit the entire company with such coats before they all left.

""

"Why the sigh?" Darkwind asked, his breath puffing out in frosty clouds
with each word. His bondbird Vree clung to the padded horn of his
saddle, with no sign of discomfort whatsoever except that his feathers
were puffed out all over his body and his head was pulled down tight
against his shoulders, so that he resembled a fat ball of wool with a
beak. But then, Vree was a forestgyre, and Darkwind had once told her
that they had come from stock adapted to harsher climes than this.
Darkwind himself cut an odd figure, and not just because of his
Hawkbrother costume or the bondbird on his saddlebow; Darkwind's mount
was neither a horse nor a Companion, but a creature as intelligent and
as foreign to Valdemaran eyes as a gryphon. It was a dyheli, a white
dyheli at that, and the representative of his own race to Valdemar. His
name was Brytha, and he had brought Firesong from k'treva to k'sheyna,
then from k'sheyna to Valdemar, and now consented to bear Darkwind on
this current mission. Why? She didn't know; Darkwind didn't know either, and the dyheli seemed disinclined to explain. They were both grateful to him; although not the equal in endurance and speed of a Companion, the dyheli was better suited to this mission than a horse, more sure-footed and vastly more intelligent. The rest of their party rode tough Shin'a'in-bred horses, especially selected for endurance, shaggy as dogs with blunt, blocky heads.

"I'm sighing because I've decided that the one thing I will never say
again is to say 'never again,"' she replied with a crooked smile.
"Because as sure as I say it, I'm forced to repeat the act I swore never to repeat." He chuckled ruefully, without needing any explanation.

Neither of them had ever thought they would be riding back into Hardorn
again. Their previous visit, although memorable, had not been
particularly pleasant, either for them or for the Hardornens. When they
had finished, mad King Ancar and his adviser Hulda were dead at their
hands, mage-caused storms were lashing the countryside, the capital was
in a state of total chaos, and the Imperial Army (taking advantage of
the moment) was pouring over the Eastern border. And although very few
Hardornens were aware of the fact, Elspeth and Darkwind were directly or indirectly responsible for most of the damage and chaos they left behind them.

Not that the Imperial Army was our fault, but that's just about the only thing we can say we didn't have a hand in.

And after the invasion came the real mage-storms, triggering incredibly
vicious weather and unleashing real horrors on the unsuspecting
countryside. Those were not the fault of anyone living, but they did
make life in Hardorn even more miserable than anyone had ever dreamed
possible. So riding into Hardorn didn't seem particularly likely or sane a few moons ago.

But that had been before Duke Tremane offered alliance; before it dawned on everyone in this part of the world that the mage-storms were a greater menace than anything mere humans could unleash on each other.
Now things that wouldn't have occurred to anyone as possible scenarios
were being hastily put into motion.

"Have you noticed something? The weather might be vile, but the land
isn't suffering anymore," Darkwind observed.

"It's not exhausted and ill anymore, it's just sleeping, waiting for
spring. I don't know about you, but that was one of the reasons why I
didn't want to ever come back here again." Elspeth nodded, and so did
her Companion Gwena, the bells on her bridle chiming crisply in the
sharp, icy air. "Without Ancar draining the land of its power, things
are returning to normal," Gwena replied. "The land, and presumably the
people, are no longer sickening. And much as I hate to say it-the blood
and life-energy of all those poor folk killed in the invasion may have
sped that recovery."

"That's a horrible thought," Darkwind observed with a shudder, for Gwena had made certain to include him in her Mindspeaking.

Elspeth shivered; intellectually she knew it was probably true, but it
was horrible all the same. "That just sounds entirely too much like
something Falconsbane would have come up with," she said reluctantly.
"But then again, Falconsbane simply perverted things that were perfectly normal and good.

And I suppose it would be even worse to think that all those people died and their life-energy went for nothing, or worse, was used by someone like Falconsbane." Mages and those with earth-sense have known for centuries that this is the reason why the countryside blooms after a war," Gwena observed dispassionately. "It isn't just that things seem
better, and it isn't just that the people are ready to greet any
positive signs with enthusiasm. It's because the lives lost go back to
the land, and when the war is over, the land can use them to heal
itself."

"We can at least be grateful that Grand Duke Tremane is apparently more
interested in allowing the land to heal than in using that power for his own means," Darkwind replied, as he turned for a moment to stare off into the east. He said nothing more, and Elspeth thought she knew why.

They had only the word of three youngsters and Tremane's own people that he was to be trusted at all. just at the moment, apparently was the only word any of them could use with regard to the leader of the Imperial forces. Those few facts that they had about Tremane were not much comfort.

Tremane had been sent by his master, Emperor Charliss, to conquer a weak and chaotic Hardorn for the Empire of the East. This assignment was to prove him worthy (or not) to be the Imperial Heir. The Imperial Army had taken roughly half of Hardorn before it stalled, held in place by Hardornen fighters, in mostly uncoordinated groups ranging in size from tiny bands to small armies, united only in their determination to oust the interloper. Since they were fighting on their own ground, they had the advantage once the front lines stretched out and the Imperial forces were thinned by distance. Nevertheless, if nothing had changed, Tremane would probably have been able to reorganize, regroup, and complete the conquest, possibly even carrying it into Valdemar.

But things did change, and in a way that no one could have foreseen; the change had come from a direction no one would have looked, for it had come out of the distant past.

We never do consider the past, do we? But we should have.

Wasn't Falconsbane a revenant of that past? And shouldn't that have
warned us to turn our eyes and thoughts in that direction? But then
again, how can we truly plan for everything, every possibility? Even if
we knew all of the threats at any one moment, the defenses for half of
them would negate the preparations for the other half. We are better off being resourceful than omniscient, I think.

Once, before there had ever been a Valdemar, in a time so distant that
there were no records and only the vaguest of hints about it in the
great library of the Heralds, ancient wars had ended in an event known
only as the Cataclysm. And until Elspeth had met with the Tayledras of
legend, the Shin'a'in of the Dhorisha Plains and the last, lost Clan
of the true Kaled'a'in-progenitors of both the Hawkbrothers and the
Shin'a'in-that was all those in Valdemar had known.

Now, though, with the help of histories both arcane and mundane, the
full story had been put together.

Elspeth considered that story as she did every time she had the leisure
to do so, intent on extracting the least bit of useful information from
it. Despite the huge amounts of power involved, there were still human
motives and actions behind what had happened so long ago. Even madmen
would act according to their needs, so the more that one considered
events of history the more one could deduce what those needs had
been-and once one understood the needs and motivations of the people
involved, one could expound upon what else might have happened, or
realize that an obscure detail was actually something significant in
context.

There had been two Adepts back then, perhaps the most powerful that the
world had ever known, called Urtho and Ma'ar. Ma'ar, the scion of
barbarian nomads, had been infected with the mania for conquest, at
first for noble reasons of uniting clans to keep them from annihilating
each other.

Urtho, the epitome of civilization and scholarship, had resisted him.
But despite the best efforts of civilization, Ma'ar, Adept and
Blood-Mage, had triumphed-But only for a moment. In the very hour of
Ma'ar's victory a dying Urtho had brought defeat to his very door, with
a pair of devices that released the bonds on all magic within their
spheres of influence. One he triggered in his own Tower; one was sent to Ma'ar. The devices acted within moments of each other, and the results were both devastating and utterly unpredictable.

When it was over, there were two enormous craters where Urtho's Tower
and Ma'ar's palace had stood. The first became the Dhorisha Plains; the
second, Lake Evendim. And the interaction of the two series of shock
waves created terrible mage-storms that had raged over the land for a
decade or more, raising mountains and flattening them, disrupting magic, causing living creatures to change and warp out of all recognition even transplanting entire sections of countryside from one part of the world to another.

Eventually the Storms faded, to be forgotten in the ensuing centuries,
assumed by all to have been gone forever. But the forces released by the Cataclysm were stranger and stronger than anyone guessed, and now the mage-storms had returned, echoing back across time from the other side of the world, growing stronger with every new occurrence.

That was what had changed the situation Tremane had walked into, changed it out of all recognition. The situation in Valdemar had been bad, but not a complete disaster. Valdemar had only newly rediscovered
true-magic, and did not depend on its power for anything. The other
effects of the magestorms, the vicious and unpredictable weather, the
warping of living creatures, and so forth, could all be dealt with in
one way or another. But for Tremane's forces, dependent on magic for
everything from communication and supply lines to the means to scout the enemy and cook their food, it was a disaster as they found themselves completely cut off from the Empire, effectively blind and hungry as a fighting force. As for what was going on in the Empire itself, that was anyone's guess. Tremane had initially assumed that the Storms were a new weapon unleashed by the Alliance of Valdemar, Karse, Rethwellan, and the Shin'a'in/Tayledras clans. He had reacted accordingly-and in a direction entirely typical of the Empire, where treachery and assassination were so commonplace that children were given bonded bodyguards as cradle-gifts. He had sent an assassin to break up the Alliance.

That was the single act that Elspeth and any other Valdemaran found so
difficult to think past. Valdemar had not attacked Imperial forces.
Neither Valdemar nor any of her allies had shown any sign of aggression
other than increasing the guard on the borders and covertly helping to
supply the Hardornen loyalists. Tremane had no reason-except for the
obvious fact that Valdemar was not suffering from the Storms as badly as the imperials were-to think that this was an attack by Queen Selenay or her allies. Nevertheless, he had treated it as one, and had sent a
covert operative armed with magic weapons to kill anyone of any
importance at or in Selenay's Court.

The man had succeeded only insofar as murdering the envoy from Karse and the one from the Shin'a'in, and wounding several others. That was bad enough, but was sheerest good fortune that it wasn't worse, and no one made any mistake about that. If the assassin had waited until the
predawn hours when people were sleeping in their beds, he would have
succeeded in killing everyone from Selenay down to the gryphons.

Herein lay the heart of Elspeth and Darkwind's current problem. Now they were supposed to trust a man who used assassins against those he only suspected of aggressive action.

Elspeth found it difficult to think beyond that fact, even though
Tremane had won over to his side the last person likely to ever forgive
him-young Karal, the secretary and protégé of the envoy of Karse,
Sun-priest and Mage, Master Ulrich.

Tremane had even somehow convinced Solaris, Son of the Sun and High
Priest and ruler of Karse, of his sincerity and his wish to make amends, though only the gods knew how he'd done that.

Well, he hasn't convinced me, and he hasn't convinced Darkwind, she
thought stubbornly. Whatever spell of words or personality he put them
under, I hope it's going to be more difficult to work the same "magic"
on us. I know mindmagic, and Darkwind is so foreign to Tremane's
experience that he might as well be another species altogether. And
what's more, I wouldn't be in the least surprised to discover that
Kerowyn slipped half a dozen special operatives into our escort. Two
sides can play the assassination game, if it comes to that.

She hoped that it wouldn't, but she had enough experience now to make
her plans around pessimism rather than hope.

She didn't officially know that Kerowyn had planted her own agents, but
she knew the Skybolts, and they were, one and all, "irregulars." Their skills were not those of straight-on fighters, although they could act and fight as a disciplined skirmishing unit and had in the past.

On the other hand...  Solaris has Hansa, the other Firecat. if she
wanted to kill Tremane, there is no way he could stop her. So maybe that fact alone will make him behave himself from now on.

That was certainly something else to consider. The Firecats possessed
the ability to "jump" themselves and anyone in physical contact with
them from one location to another, and Elspeth was not entirely certain
what their range was. Certainly it was good enough that Altra and Hansa
served as messengers between Solaris and Selenay, and between the party
in the remains of Urtho's Tower and the mages and Artificers in the
Valdemaran capital of Haven. Solaris was perfectly capable of placing an assassin of her own right under Tremane's privy to poke a knife up into him if she so desired, and for that matter, there was no reason why Hansa himself could not kill a man if he chose. Although Firecats had the ability to look like common cats if they wished to, in their true form they were the size of enormous hounds, and their claws and teeth were correspondingly long and sharp.

Elspeth blinked at the images that thought conjured up. My thoughts are
certainly taking a grim turn today. Maybe I'm concentrating on spilling
blood as an antidote to all this whiteness. Dear gods, it's cold-and we
haven't seen another human soul since our guides left us.

They'd been lucky when they'd reached the Valdemaran Border. A couple of Hardornen exiles-vouched for by Kerowyn' s agents-had cautiously decided it was safe to return and acted as guides up until this morning in exchange for two pouches of currency and two packs of supplies. Now, though, they would have to go on without guides, because the husband and wife had gone as far as they intended.

Last night the party had reached the village from which the couple had originally fled. Even though it proved to be deserted, abandoned, like
the other villages they had passed on this road, the two wanted to stay; even in thick white desolation they had a dream of a time in the future when there would be children running and playing in a verdant town square.

Their journey thus far had been an unnerving one, riding through a
landscape devoid of humans. Elspeth could only wonder what had happened.

The land might be healing, but where are the people? True, Ancar had
decimated the population, but why hadn't they met with anyone on this
road? Why were all the villages they passed through completely deserted?

The abandoned villages raised more questions than were answered, for
everything had been taken except the heaviest of furniture, and there
was no sign of violence. Was this the result of systematic desertion or
systematic looting? Who was cleaning off the snow? Were the Hardornens
hiding from an armed and possibly hostile group? Given the fact that
this was a nation racked by war, that was possible. But why, when there
was a Herald of Valdemar riding conspicuously in the front?

Perhaps because at a distance there's no reason to assume I really am a
Herald. It's not that hard to get a white horse and a set of white
clothing.

"What are our plans for stopping tonight, or do we have any?" she called back to the leader of the troop. They hadn't provisioned themselves for camping, though they had brought all their own food, assuming that rations might be short given the horrible mage-weather Hardorn had endured. It was a good thing they had, or they'd have had a choice between starving and (literally) eating crow.

"In theory there's a town ahead that used to have a weekly market and
five big inns," the leader replied, his voice muffled by the scarf
swathing his face. "Whether or not it's still tenanted-" he shrugged.
"Someone's been keeping the road clean for traders, and I'm hoping it's
them." So was Elspeth, fervently. She was not looking forward to
spending another night in an abandoned, derelict building.

There was always one building that could be made to serve, and there was
certainly no shortage of firewood, but she had always been glad of the
presence of the others around her.

She'd found it hard to sleep at night, with her shoulder blades
prickling as if unseen eyes watched her. No one had actually seen or
heard anything that could be taken as a ghost, but such places felt
haunted.

She couldn't begin to imagine how Rusi and Sevam could bear to stay back there in what was left of their village.

Granted, there was plenty of material to make more than one of the
houses sound and weather tight again. And granted, they were
well-equipped to do just that. But the aching emptiness of the abandoned village would have sent her screaming for Valdemar within a week.

It was more than she could bear to think about right now.

I've done a great deal that people think is brave, but I'm not that
brave.

But that was also assuming that the land around the village was as
deserted as it looked. When the mage-storms created killing weather and
murderous monsters, would it have been safer and smarter to fortify the
farmsteads and stay where the food was, or to come into the village and
trust in numbers and weapons but chance the food running out? It wasn't
a decision Elspeth had ever needed to make, and she hoped it was one
nobody in Valdemar would be forced to face.

For that, all their hopes rested with that tiny group in the middle of
the Dhorisha Plains, in the ruins of Urtho's Tower.

If anyone could find an answer, it would be them. Although Elspeth and
Darkwind were both Adept-class mages, Elspeth was relatively untutored
and Darkwind had abandoned magic for so many years that despite his
considerable prowess he still considered himself out of practice. As
mages, they were of no help to the researchers who had gone to the
Tower. They might be of some use with the Imperials, and they would be
of great use as envoys.

She knew that Queen Selenay had debated long and hard before deciding to send Elspeth and Darkwind as envoys from the Alliance to Tremane. The Queen hadn't wanted to send Elspeth, but Elspeth was the only logical choice-she could make autonomous decisions, she had been trained both as a Herald and to wear the crown herself-she was the next best thing to Selenay when it came to being able to think for Valdemar.

Elspeth had proven that she had good judgment, and because she was no
longer the Heir since her abdication, she was of little value as a
political hostage. Moreover, she had been trained by Kerowyn to defend
herself against assassins; she could take care of herself in an ambush
or an even fight, and she was as suspicious as even that redoubtable
woman could have wished.

Then there was magic, in which she was an Adept; Tremane was no more
than a Master, though of a far different magical discipline than the one she had been trained in. Very few of the Heralds of Valdemar were mages at all, much less Adepts, and although their Companions would be able to help them to some extent in matters of magic, it was no substitute for being mages themselves.

All that might not have been enough, except for Darkwind; he was an
Adept as well, and of longer standing than she. He had been a Tayledras
scout, which made him something of a fighter as well. He would have
refused flatly to accompany anyone else; he was not a Herald, and his
loyalties were to her, not Valdemar. Whereas she would hardly have gone
anywhere without him, of course, and together they were a formidable
pair.

Between her own qualifications and Darkwind's, there simply was no one
as "right" to go on this mission as Elspeth, and if she had been anyone
else's daughter, Selenay would not have hesitated for a moment to send
her.

To give Mother credit, she didn't hesitate long. Elspeth was actually a
bit pleased at that; Selenay had been treating her less as a daughter
and more as-as an adult, and Elspeth had gotten the feeling, more than
once, that when the Queen forgot to think of her as her daughter, she
acted naturally. in a way, given the Queen's behavior of late, Elspeth
had been a little surprised that her mother had given second thoughts to the mission. I wonder if some of what has made her hesitate in the past was more guilt than anything else.

Could it have been? Elspeth and her mother had never been comfortable
with each other. No matter how hard she tried, she always saw my father
in me. In so many ways, I was more Talia's child than hers. Now Selenay
had the twins, children she could give her whole heart to; could she be
feeling guilt that she didn't have that same maternal bond with Elspeth?

Was that why she had always overreacted when Elspeth did something that
might put her in jeopardy-because she felt as if she should have been
more worried, more emotionally involved than she was?

An interesting theory, and one I'll never learn the truth of.

I certainly couldn't ask her that, and the only other person who would
know will never tell me. Talia would never betray anything she learned
of Mother's heart, and rightly so. Elspeth gave herself a mental shake.
Did it matter? Not really.

Except that-if that was indeed the case, she wished she could convince
her mother that it didn't matter. The last thing that the Queen of
Valdemar needed was one more thing to feel guilty about. She already
carried enough guilt for twenty people.

And I would rather be Queen Selenay's friend and fellow Herald than her
daughter.

But the thought did present one explanation for some of Selenay's
contradictory behavior, and it was certainly worth keeping in the back
of her mind. She could watch for evidence of her own, and it would be
interesting to act on that theory and see what happened.

Meanwhile, there was a long and difficult job ahead of her, and there
was a danger they might all freeze to death before they even got to it if they didn't find some Hardornens soon.

"How much farther do you think this town is?" she called back over her
shoulder. She glanced back to see-what was the Guard-Captain's name?
Vallen, that was it-to see Vallen shrug, the movement barely visible
beneath his multiple layers of fur, sheepskin, and wool.

"Soon, I think, but that is just a guess," he replied. Despite the scarf he wore about his face, his words came clearly over the muffled
hoofbeats of their various mounts, over the creaking of the packed snow
beneath those hooves. He gave his horse a nudge with his heels, and took the lead position as Elspeth and Darkwind moved aside to let him by.

Elspeth stood in her stirrups for a moment to peer up the road ahead,
but if there were any signs of habitations such as plumes of smoke that
could have been rising from chimneys, they were invisible against the
uniformly gray-white sky. The sun was nothing more than a fuzzy, lighter spot about halfway down to the horizon.

She settled back down in her saddle; the way the road wound about, it
wasn't possible to see very far ahead, and they only got a view of the
countryside when the snowbanks allowed.

We could be right on top of this town and we'd never know it, she
thought.

Minutes later, the road gave another turn and dropped away in front of
them. The snowbanks themselves inclined down to about waist-height. As
if conjured up in a scrying crystal, the watched-for town appeared ahead of and below them, down in a shallow valley, the houses sticking up out of the snow like so many tree stumps in the snow-covered forest.

This was not the first time a town had appeared before them, but now,
for the first time, there were signs that the place was inhabited. Some
of the houses were nothing more than snow-covered lumps, but some had
been cleaned of their burden of white. Thin smoke wreathed up out of
about half the chimneys, to be snatched away by the wind before it
climbed up to form a plume. There were a few figures moving about on the road near the town, and it was clear from the purposeful way that they moved that the party had been spotted, if not anticipated.

The place looked marginally better than the deserted villages they had
already passed. Perhaps half the buildings were in disrepair; one or two had collapsed roofs, and it was hard to tell under the snow how badly some of the others had suffered.

She had to guess that only the buildings with smoke rising from them
were actually lived in, and she caught her breath at the thought that
Ancar and all the other troubles visited upon Hardorn had literally cut
the population in half.

Maybe more, she reminded herself. How many deserted villages did we pass through?

Were conditions like this everywhere? If so-well, she did not envy any
leader the task of trying to bring this country back from such
devastation. If Tremane can get the Hardornens to accept him, he has
more work ahead of him than I'd care to take on.

A group of about a dozen people had formed up ahead of them on the road, barring them, at least for the moment, from entering the town. They were as bundled up in clothing as Elspeth's group was, making it difficult to tell anything about them, including their sexes; but in spite of that handicap, she thought that their stances showed a mix of fear and belligerence.

Fear? When had anyone ever feared her? They weren't so in deep into
Hardorn that the natives should be unaware of what a Herald was and what one stood for. How could they fear a "Herald? Had Ancar created that fear in them so strongly?

She sensed the fighters behind her surreptitiously loosening their
weapons, placing hands casually on hilts, and increasing their
watchfulness. So it was not her imagination; they sensed hostility, too.

Vallen reined in his horse and allowed her to take the lead; Darkwind
signaled the dyheli to drop back with his head even with Gwena's flank.
Elspeth brought them all to a halt about a length away from the
"welcoming party" by gesturing with an upraised hand.

"We are peaceful travelers from Valdemar," she said in their own tongue, pulling her scarf down so that they could see her entire face-though she did wonder if they'd believe the "peaceful" part with so many weapons in evidence. "Who is in charge here?" Two of the figures looked at each other, and one stepped forward, though he did not reveal his face as Elspeth had. Now that Elspeth was closer to them, the ragged state of their clothing was painfully evident. Their coats were
carefully mended, but with patches that were not even a close match for
the same material as the original.

"Me. I'm in charge, as I reckon," the foremost man said gruffly, and he
folded his arms clumsily over his chest. He had no weapon in evidence,
but Elspeth did not take that to mean that these people were helpless.
If she'd been in charge, she'd have archers with drawn bows at every
window.

She did not look up to see if her guess was correct.

"What're you here for?" the man continued. His arms tightened and his
posture straightened. His voice rose, angry and strained. "If you think
you people in Valdemar are going to come in here and take us over, us
and our land-"

"No," Elspeth interrupted, cutting him off more sharply than she had intended. The man's nerves had infected her, and she took a deep breath to steady herself. "No," she repeated with less force. "We-Valdemar-has no intention of taking one ell of Hardorn land. Until Ancar attacked us, we were always the loyal friend and ally of Hardorn, and we intend to return to that status now that Ancar is gone."

He laughed, but it was not a sound of humor. "Ha!" he jeered. "You say that, but why should we believe you?"

"I swear it on my honor as a Herald!" she countered quickly. "You must
know what that means, at least! Surely you have not lost faith even in
that!" This all had the feeling of a test, as if what she said here
would make all the difference in how they would be treated from this
moment on.

Do they have some way to communicate with other communities still? She
couldn't imagine how anyone could cross this frozen wasteland faster
than they were already doing, but the party of Valdemarans was confined
to the road, and perhaps the natives had some way of cutting across
country to spread news. Perhaps the old signal-towers were still
working.

That could be the answer. And it could be how they knew we were coming.

"I swear it as a Herald," she repeated. "And as the envoy of the Queen.
Valdemar has no designs on Hardorn, nor do any of the other parties to
the Alliance." though Solaris had to restrain a few hotheads in Karse.

Or rather, Vkandis did" We're only traveling," she continued smoothly.
"We'd appreciate your hospitality for the night, though we did bring our own provisions. We know how difficult things have been for you, and we didn't want to strain anyone's resources." There was a long silence,
during which the man peered at her closely, and finally nodded, as if
satisfied with what he saw. "That outfit's kind of outlandish, but
you've got the horse, blue eyes and all, and that can't be faked." He
shrugged, then, and made a gesture that she suspected told those hidden
archers that all was well. "I guess we still believe in Heralds mostly
since Ancar tried so hard to make us think you was some kind of witchy
crew that had traffic with demons. I'll take your word as bond for you
and the rest of this lot, but you better remember that you stand
personal surety for them." She nodded, trying not to show how unsettled
his words made her feel. This was, literally, the first time she had
ever encountered anyone this close to the border of Valdemar who didn't
accept and welcome a Herald with trust. What had happened to these
people to make them this way?

Ancar is what happened to them, dear. They will be long in trusting
anyone ever again," Gwena said quietly. "It may be that this generation
never will."

"So where are you going, then?" the man asked, still wary.

"Tell him the truth, ke'chara," Darkwind said softly in Tayledras.
"Don't dissemble. We might as well see now. what kind of reception we're going to have while we still have the provisions to turn around and go home. We can't afford to fight our way across this country to get to Tremane." She nodded slightly to show that she'd heard him; he was right, of course. If they couldn't get to Tremane's headquarters without fighting, there was no point in going on. "We're on our way to a town called Shonar," she said carefully, wondering how much or little he knew.

He knew enough; the man rocked back a pace. "You're going to Tremane?"
he demanded. "The Impie Duke?" She couldn't tell if he was angry or not, but she was already committed to the truth, so she nodded.

"We're the Valdemaran envoy to Tremane," she replied.

"He-he wants to join the Alliance. Things that we have learned make us
inclined to trust him to be honorable." We hope.

There were murmurs from the group behind the man, and Elspeth took
heart from the fact that they didn't sound angry just thoughtful. The
man himself considered them for a moment, then waved his followers
aside. "We need to talk, Herald from Valdemar," he said with a touch of
formality. "And there's no point in doing it in this cold. Come along;
the inn's still in repair and heated, even if the innkeeper's gone, and
if you've got bedrolls to sleep in, there's beds to put them on. If you
can tend to yourselves and feed yourselves, we can give you fair shelter for the night."

That was the most welcome statement she'd heard yet on this journey, and she allowed Gwena to fall in obediently behind the man as he led the way to the inn.

The inn was in good repair, as promised, and so were the stables. The
group dismounted in the inn-yard and led their mounts and the pack
animals inside a stout building with a surprising number of animals in
the stalls.

They must be keeping all of the horses and ponies in the town here, she
realized after a look around. That makes more sense than scattering
them, one and two to a stable.

The Hardornens quickly set to, throwing down straw from the hayloft to
make up the remaining stalls for the visitors.

As it turned out, they also had hay, though no grain to spare; that was
fine, though. The Valdemarans had brought a string of chirras with them, loaded down with their supplies. The chirras did perfectly well on the hay alone, and there was plenty of grain in the supplies for the horses, Gwena, and the dyheli, Brytha.

Everyone in the party pitched in to help in the stables; Elspeth' s
cardinal rule, learned from Kerowyn, was that the welfare of their
beasts came before the needs of the humans, and no one disagreed with
her.

With the horses, chirras, Brytha, and Gwena warmly bedded down and fed
and the sun setting behind the veil of gray cloud, they all trudged into the inn carrying their baggage.

Once inside, they stood in a tight group for a moment, looking carefully around. The common room, a large chamber with a huge fireplace at one end, stout wooden floor and walls, and smoke-blackened beams supporting the roof, had none of the air of neglect and decay that Elspeth had feared.

She guessed that the villagers had turned the place into their informal
meeting house, for the place was too clean to have been swept out just
for their benefit. The other door, the one that led into the street,
kept opening as more and more people came in, and it looked to her as if most of the adults were gathering in the common room. They had all
brought firewood with them as well, which relieved one question in
Elspeth's mind-it would have been difficult for the Valdemarans to
supply firewood for themselves.

The fellow in charge had not yet pulled off his coat, but he had removed the scarf from his face. He pushed to the front of the crowd, and waved a mittened hand at the staircase, and his weathered, careworn features were kinder than Elspeth had expected.

"Rooms are upstairs, take your pick," he said. "When you've settled
yourselves, come down here where we can talk." Several of those waiting
came up the wooden staircase with their guests, bringing firewood to
leave beside each hearth before returning downstairs. They didn't say
anything, but Elspeth got the impression that was more because they were taciturn or shy than that they were hostile. With fires warming the chambers that had fireplaces, and bricks heating up to warm the cold bedding of those in chambers that didn't, the Valdemarans finally
trickled downstairs to meet the eyes of their erstwhile hosts.

Elspeth took the lead, the rest following her. The natives watched
Elspeth with covert curiosity, but the moment that Darkwind descended
the staircase, they gave up any pretense of politeness and just stared,
mouths agape with amazement.

The corners of Elspeth's mouth twitched, but she managed not to laugh
out loud at their expressions.

I doubt they've ever seen anything like my Darkwind. He must seem like
something right out of a minstrel's ballad to them.

Darkwind really was quite a sight, with his long silver hair, his
strange, exotic clothing, and the enormous bondbird on his shoulder.
When he reached up a hand to Vree, casually lifted him off his shoulder, and cast the forestgyre into the air so he could fly across the room and take a perch on a beam, every Hardornen in the place ducked, and several looked as if they were afraid the bird was going to attack them.

For his part, Vree was on his best behavior, perching where there wasn't going to be anyone sitting directly beneath or behind him. That was extremely polite of him, for if he fell asleep, his instincts would
overcome his training if he had to "slice." And a bird the size of Vree
could produce an amazing amount of hawk-chalk.

She waited for Darkwind to reach her side, and took his hand in hers.
"This is Darkwind k'sheyna, a Hawkbrother from one of the Hawkbrother
Clans in the Alliance," she said, as matter-of-factly as if she had
said, "This is Thorn, a farmer from the next valley." Their eyes bulged
at that, and she didn't blame them. Even in Valdemar, up until recently
the Hawkbrothers had been nothing more than a very spooky legend-what
must these Hardornens think?

"He is my fellow envoy, my partner, and my mate," she continued.
"Representing the Hawkbrothers, the Shin'a'in, and other interests. As I said, we are traveling to Shonar, to Grand Duke Tremane, as official
envoys of Valdemar and other members of the Alliance." The fellow who
had taken charge of the meeting nodded.

He had by now divested himself of his coat, and wore the clothing of a
craftsman-a blacksmith, if Elspeth was any judge, by the scorch marks
and mended places that might have been burn marks. He looked much
shabbier than any blacksmith Elspeth had ever seen in Valdemar, where
they tended to be the more prosperous citizens of a town.

Perhaps he is the most prosperous man here. What a thought! If he's as
shabby as a beggar, how are the others faring?

The fact that he was the blacksmith would be the reason that Ancar had
not "recruited" him for the army, given that he was able-bodied and
neither too old nor too young to fight.

A town this size depended on having a blacksmith, and the local smith
would need to have more skill than an apprentice.

"I'm Hob," the man said, and gestured to one of the tables.

If he'd been fed as well as he should have, his face would have been
round, like an old, weathered ball. He was not starved-looking, but his
bones were showing; just a hint that these people had seen bad times, as if she didn't already know that.

"If some of your people want to go fix up your food, we'd like to talk
with you and your-your mate, there."

"We'd be happy to share what we have," Elspeth began, flushing a little
with guilt, but he shook his head.

"We've got enough to hold us, so long as spring don't wait to
midsummer," he said. "And you'll need every bit you've got to get to
Shonar. Thanks to, ah, some good advice, most folk between here and
there have enough, but there's none to spare. I doubt you'll find anyone that can sell you so much as a sack of oats, and even if they would, it wouldn't be for money." Elspeth looked back over her shoulder to Vallen; he nodded, and with a gesture sent four of the guards off to the kitchen.

The rest took seats with, and carefully around, Elspeth. Darkwind
remained at her right hand, and she was not in the least deceived by his casual pose. If anyone so much as raised his voice in a way he
considered threatening, the offending party might find himself facing
the point of a knife or being held in the bonds of a most uncomfortable
tangle-spell or racking paralysis.

And that's assuming I didn't act on a perception of threat first, for
myself.

Hob sat across the table from Elspeth, and rubbed his nose, as if
wondering how to begin. Finally he just set his shoulders and blundered
in. "You say you're going to Shonar. How much do you know about this
Tremane?" Not long on tact, but I doubt he's used to being the leader of these people. He probably hasn't had much occasion for tact. Elspeth
shrugged. "What we know is this; he's brought in his entire force to
Shonar, and he's broken off all hostile actions with Hardornen
loyalists. From what we've been told, he's going out of his way to avoid conflict with loyalist groups, which, you'll admit, in this weather isn't exactly difficult.

Hob snorted in agreement.

"Not only has he expressed an interest in joining the Alliance, he
loaned us several of his mages to help us with-" she hesitated. How much would he understand if she told him about the mage-storms? "-with the magical problem that's at the heart of all the weird things that have been happening."

"The monsters? The weather? Them circles?" Hob's eyes widened and he
grew quite excited. "Tremane helped you with fixing them?"

"He did, and he continues to," Elspeth replied. "It's a bigger problem
than you may realize. It isn't just Hardorn that's been plagued by all
these calamities. "It's Valdemar, the Pelagirs, Rethwellan, Karse, the
Dhorisha Plains and, we're guessing, just about everywhere else, right
out to the Empire. The Alliance, with Tremane's help, managed to fix
things temporarily, in the area covered by the Alliance nations." She
decided that it might be best not to mention Solaris' personal interview with the Grand Duke; after all, she only knew that it had occurred, not what had been said. "As for the rest that we know about Tremane, we have been told that the citizens of Shonar and the surrounding area have come to look upon him as their protector. We have heard that he has been doing good things for them."

"Aye," Hob said slowly. "We've heard the same. We've heard that them as
was fighting against him have come over to his side, that he's been
acting like-like we was his people.

And now he's helping you in Valdemar?" She nodded. He pursed his lips
and exchanged glances with some of his fellow villagers. They weren't
very good at hiding their expressions; what she was telling them agreed
with some of what they had heard, and they were surprised to have an
outsider confirm what they'd clearly thought were hopeful but unlikely
rumors.

"We've heard as how things are pretty fat in Shonar, all things
considered," he said finally. "We've heard that it's because of Tremane. We've heard he set his men out helping with harvest, building walls around the town, doing other things like that 'sides taking down
monsters." She spread her hands in a gesture he could read as he chose.

"We've heard the same things," she said. "I don't know yet how much
truth is in what we've heard, but I'm certain that your sources are
completely different from ours. I can tell you this, not all of our
sources are Tremane's people."

"And when two people say the same thing... aye." There was a great
deal of murmuring behind him. He chewed on his lower lip. "All the
same-"

"All the same, it's possible that he is putting on a good face for us,
hoping to lure us into accepting him," she said, as bluntly as he would
have. "We don't know, and we won't know until we get there." Hob traced
the grain of the wood of the table with his finger and avoided her
eyes. "All the same, lady-we need a leader. There's nobody left of the old blood; damned Ancar saw to that."

"And people have been talking about accepting the Duke?" That was more
than she had expected to hear, on this side of the former battle lines.
"A foreigner? An Imperial?"

"The Duke, not his bloody Empire!" someone said in the back. "We heard
his Emperor left him hanging out to dry when the troubles started; we
heard he's not Charliss' dog no more."

"Hell, he couldn't be, could he, if he's comin' to you with his brass
hat in his hand, looking to get into the Alliance," Hob said, looking
hopeful. "He's proving himself for Shonar; if he proves himself for
Shonar, why not for Hardorn?"

"But what if he doesn't just want to be your leader?" Elspeth asked
softly. "What if he wants to be your King?" Hob hesitated a moment, then shrugged. "That's all cake or calamity tomorrow, isn't it?" he said philosophically. "We got to get through the winter first." He favored Elspeth with a shy smile. "I can tell you this, there's one way we'd take him."

"Even as a King?" Darkwind asked quietly.

He nodded, slowly. "Even as a King. He'd have to swear on something we'd trust that he wasn't Charliss' man. Then he'd have to swear to Hardorn. And he'd have to do what Ancar, his father, even what his grandfather never did." He paused for effect. "He'd have to take the earth, in the old way." Elspeth shook her head. "That's nothing I know of," she replied.

Hob smiled again. "The earth-taking-that's old, lady. Older than Valdemar, or so they say. What's old is sure, that's the
saying anyway. They say them as takes the earth can't betray it. There's still a priest or two about that knows the way of earth-taking. If this Tremane'd take the earth and the earth takes him-well, there's no going back. He's bound harder and tighter than if we put chains on him."

Elspeth kept her feelings of skepticism to herself. After all she'd
seen, there was no telling whether Hob was right about this
"earth-taking" of his or not. "Well, you can believe that Valdemar has
no interest in taking the rule of Hardorn away from the people; what you do about it is your business," Elspeth said carefully. "Our business is to see if what we've been told is true, and to advise the Alliance if it is not." He nodded, and did not add the obvious question of how she expected to get herself and her party out in one piece if Tremane turned out to be playing his own game. That wasn't his problem, and she couldn't blame him for not volunteering to help if things got difficult. The people of Hardorn had all they could do to survive, and they had nothing to spare for foreigners out of Valdemar.

Comforting aromas of cooking food emerged from the kitchen, and Hob took that gratefully as his escape from the conversation. "Looks like your people have your food ready; we'll go leave you in peace with it. You can leave in the morning when you choose-and-ah-" he flushed a little "you'll have better welcome farther along. Signal-towers are still up, and there's still a few as know the old signals. We'll be passing along that you're all right, that you're going on up to Tremane. Nobody'll hinder you; there're enough places with four sound walls and a roof that you'll get shelter at night." As he stood up, Elspeth remained seated, but raised a hand toward Hob.

"And does the Grand Duke know that the towers are still
working?" she asked.

He laughed, which was all the answer she needed. So Tremane was not
aware of this rapid means of passing news along. That could be useful,
if it turned out he was playing a deeper game than they thought.

Hob and the rest of his people filed out, leaving the Valdemarans alone, and Elspeth turned first to Vallen as the kitchen crew put bowls of stewed dried meat and preserved fruit, and plates of travel biscuits
onto the table. "Well?" she asked.

"What do you think?" He sat down across from her in Hob's place and
picked up a biscuit and a bowl before answering. "This matches what we'd heard and didn't really believe," he said slowly, dipping his bread into his gravy and eating the biscuit with small, neat bites. "Tremane sounds too good to be true. Altogether an admirable and unselfish leader." There was a faint echo of mockery in his voice.

"So does Selenay, if you look at things objectively." Darkwind reminded
him. "And yes, I know, Tremane has no Companion to keep him honorable,
but I'm not sure one would be needed in this case. At least for now,
he's in a precarious situation. With the way things have fallen out, his position and his level of personal danger aren't that much different from the average craftsman in Shonar. He needs them as much as they need a leader; if they fall, it won't be long before he does, too. If they rebel, he has no population base to support his troops. This summer, they were fighting against him, and it wouldn't take much mistreatment to make them turn on him." Elspeth nodded, agreeing with him, although Vallen appeared a bit more dubious. "He has armed troops, loyal only to him," Vallen pointed out.

"He'll have a hard time feeding those troops without farmers," Elspeth
replied. "And he can have all the silver he needs to pay them, but if
they haven't anywhere to spend it, their loyalty will start to erode.
You can't keep an army under siege, starving and far from home without
losing it." Vallen speared a bit of meat and blew on it to cool it. "All I can say is this," the Guard-Captain said, after he'd eaten the bite. "It's not all that difficult for a charismatic leader to sway the people immediately around him with words instead of deeds. It's a lot more difficult to do that with people out of the reach of his personality. They're inclined to look for something to corroborate what they've heard, and if there's nothing there, they forget him."

"But you're surprised at what you're hearing from Hob," Elspeth stated.

Vallen nodded. "Very. And not the least because a few months ago, these
people would have fought with everything they had left to get rid of the man. Now they're considering accepting him as a leader. Doesn't it sound as if they've heard and learned something very compelling over the past few months? I just hope that what they've heard has more substance than twice-told tales." Elspeth sighed and nodded, as she and everyone else applied themselves to their food. This was the first warm meal they'd had all day, and their supper last night had been hastily prepared over a smoky fire in the remains of a half-ruined house, not cooked in a proper kitchen. As the gnawing hunger in the pit of her stomach eased, and the warmth from their dinner filled her, she became aware just how tired she was. When she glanced around the table, there wasn't anyone except Darkwind who wasn't leaning his head on his hand as he ate. She felt the same way; worn down by the cold, and quite ready to go to bed as soon as she finished the last bite. Darkwind seemed in his element, and she would not have hesitated a moment in trusting the entire expedition to him.

Some of the others looked quite ready to fall asleep over their plates.
"It's the cold," Darkwind said quietly. "Don't worry this is normal.
It's being in the cold from dawn until dusk, without a chance to warm
up, then going to bed in cold beds and unheated rooms. Tonight will make a difference, with a good hot meal and warm beds; tomorrow everyone will end the day without being quite so exhausted. If we can get shelter like this for the rest of the trip, our people will revive in no time at all." He ought to know, and she should have remembered. Then again, perhaps she was not at fault for forgetting; when she'd worked beside him as a scout and border-guard at k'sheyna Vale, they'd lived in the Vale. They'd return from their shifts on patrol to an ekele in the midst of a garden spot, as warm as a midsummer day. Before that, he'd refused to live inside the Vale, and there might well have been times when he'd returned home to a chilled ekele, or might even have remained overnight camping in the wilderness. Just because she had never personally experienced such hardship, that didn't mean he hadn't.

"Let's go to bed," Vallen said abruptly, after jerking his head up
suddenly for the third time as he nodded off in spite of valiant efforts to stay awake. "I can't keep my eyes open anymore."

I'll clean up; I'm good for that," Elspeth volunteered, and smiled at
the look of surprise from Vallen. What, did he think she considered
herself above such chores? Or had he forgotten that at the last several
stops, she'd taken her turn at gathering fodder from the ruined barns,
putting together makeshift stalls for the horses and chirras, and
gathering clean snow for water? "I was a Herald-trainee once, or don't
you recall? I've scrubbed my share of pots in my time, and I think I can manage without breaking anything." Darkwind picked up empty bowls,
knives, and spoons without comment other than a wink. Sometimes they
both forgot the way other people saw them. She caught Vallen staring
after Darkwind with an even greater look of surprise than he'd shown
when she volunteered to clean up.

Does he think Hawkbrothers magic their plates clean? Oh, well, he
probably does, and it doesn't occur to him that it would be harder work
to clean a pot by magic than to do it by hand.

She gathered up what Darkwind couldn't carry, and both of them went into the kitchen.

This had been a particularly fine inn once, with a pump supplying water
to the kitchen; the cooking crew had left water heating on the hearth.
Both the regular Guards and Kerowyn's mercenaries were used to every
aspect of this kind of mission; when it came to cooking, they were
nothing if not efficient. It didn't take long to clean the bowls and
cutlery and the two pots they had used for heating the food.

"I keep having second thoughts about this trip," Elspeth said quietly.

Darkwind nodded. "I can understand why you would feel that way, but I
believe we are doing one of many things that could be the right path,"
he replied, carefully wiping out a pot and putting it away. It was a
typically Tayledras response. "We must remain in contact with Tremane;
that much I am certain of. How we do that-well, this is one way. There
would have been others, but this is the way we chose, and I do not think we have chosen amiss."

"At least in this case, we'll have our own eyes and ears in Shonar, she
sighed.

He smiled. "And tongues as well! We can also advise, if Tremane chooses
to listen to us." The pots, bowls, and utensils had all come with them,
and she repacked them in the bags with the supplies. "Given the way
things have been going so far," she observed, it's only too likely, I
suppose, for something entirely unexpected to happen out here. And in
that case, the Alliance had better have people in place to observe and
reassure ..." Darkwind slipped his arm around her shoulders, turning his hug into a way to turn her toward the door to the common room. "And to fix, transform, leverage, and otherwise turn things for the better.
Tremane, according to Kerowyn, comes from a culture in which treachery
is a commonplace," he reminded her. "If anything unexpected were to
occur, that would be the first explanation that would come to him." She
shook her head, and let him draw her toward the door.

If she hadn't been too tired to think properly, she might have been able to make some kind of rational discussion out of this.

As it was "You know, I almost feel sorry for Tremane," she admitted
reluctantly as they mounted the stairs to their room. Rank did have
privileges, and she had laid claim to one of the rooms with a real bed
and a fireplace; it had probably been one of the expensive chambers when this had still been an inn. She was looking forward to sleeping in a bed, warmed by a hot brick at its foot.

Well, maybe not sleeping, at least not for a little while. I do have
Darkwind here... "I do feel sorry for him," Darkwind said unexpectedly,

"And I believe I know why young Karal forgave him. Just because he has
been forced to deal with daily treachery does not make him a treacherous individual. We do not know what he is really like, except that we may guess somewhat through his actions." This speech had taken them up the stairs and to the space just outside the door to their room. Elspeth opened the door, drew him inside, and stopped the rest of the speech with her lips on his.

"I have had quite enough of Tremane to last me until morning," she said
firmly, as he responded as she had hoped he would, by pulling her closer and simultaneously closing the door to their room. "I think we can afford not to think of him, for a little while, at least."

"Oh, at least," he agreed, and then said nothing more with words for
quite some time.

Hob was as good as his word. From that time on, they began to see and
interact with the people of Hardorn-those that remained, at least-and
were given the limited hospitality that this sad land could afford.
Elspeth continued to be surprised at the suspicion with which the
Valdemarans were met.

It didn't make any sense to her that the natives should persist in
considering them the harbingers of another invasion. If they had been a
real invading force, they would have had a small army at least. If they
had been the advance scouts of an invasion, they wouldn't have come so
openly.

She gradually decided that the reason had nothing to do with logic.
Ancar had already poisoned his people's minds about the Valdemarans, and some of that poison still lingered.

At the very beginning of his war with Valdemar, when his people had not
yet been aware of the kind of man he really was, he had
told them that his war was justified, that the Valdemarans were
responsible for the murder of his father and most of the High Council,
and that the Queen of Valdemar intended to annex Hardorn as a subject
state of her own land.

Later, of course, Ancar proved even to the most naive of his countrymen
that he was never to be trusted, but some of his lies still remained
in the back of peoples' memories. Perhaps they no longer even recalled
it was Ancar who had spread those lies in the first place.

And to folk who themselves were never warlike to begin with, and who were now suffering privations worse in their way than even their life under Ancar, an armed force like hers-obviously well-trained, well-fed,
well-armed, and in top condition-must look very much like an army. These folks hadn't yet seen the Imperial Army; they'd only heard rumors of it, how large it was, how incredibly professional. Away from the conflicts at the border, they had never seen anything larger than the garrisons Ancar bivouacked in their villages to insure their cooperation and to collect taxes. Perhaps their imaginations couldn't encompass the idea of an army, how large one had to be. Yet here was her force, quite large enough to take over every town in its path, and they didn't have to imagine what it was like, or if it was real, and right in front of them.

The natives usually came around after a short meeting, such as she and
her troop had had with Hob. At that point, the Valdemarans were treated
like travelers instead of conquerors.

Villagers would recall the old, hospitable customs, and would usually
open the inn, the temple, or a Guildhall to them. Then there were warm
beds, warm rooms, and once in a while, a bit of fresh meat to add to
their own rations. There was no trouble with finding firewood this
winter-not with half (or more) of the buildings in any given community
standing empty, and falling down. Sensibly, the survivors had moved into the best homes and kept them in repair, and were using the rest for materials and firewood. They might be on short rations, but they were going to spend the rest of the winter in warmth.

And that, Elspeth realized, (as she and her party continued to brave the cold that penetrated even the warmest of clothing and left them aching by day's end), was what would save these villagers. They could get by on less food, as long as they were warm enough. They might emerge when the snows melted as gaunt as spring bears, but they would be alive, for the cold would kill more quickly than short rations.

But the nearer they got to Shonar, the more people seemed cautiously
impressed with Tremane, or at least with the stories they were hearing
about him. Once the terrible, killing blizzards caused by the passing
waves of mage-storms had subsided into more "normal" winter weather, he
had begun making tentative overtures toward those who lived out past the area he had secured for himself and his army. He had sent his men out to clear the roads and keep them clear; he had encouraged such small trade as there might be in the dead of winter. If the rumors were true, he had also sent his men ranging in a limited fashion on monster-killing expeditions.

Supposedly, anyone within a three-day range of Shonar could come and
request his help with killing a monster, provided that they knew either
where it denned or what its range was. The Grand Duke evidently had no
intention of sending parties of his soldiers off to wander about in the
snow, trying to find a monster, and possibly making targets of
themselves.

Tremane would send out a team of twenty of his trained soldiers, all
armed to the teeth and experienced in fighting mageborn aberrations, and all the natives had to do was lead them to the monster or to where it might be trapped or cornered.

The soldiers did the rest; the natives got the privilege of deciding
what happened to the carcass. Often, if it looked remotely edible, they
would ask the Healer who traveled with the group to determine if it was
safe to eat, and the Healer invariably obliged.

In addition, once the monster or monsters were disposed of, the group
would remain long enough to conduct a hunt of feral stock, which was
generally not all that difficult to find.

Half of what they killed they took back to Shonar; the remaining half
they left to feed the natives. Since this was always more than the
locals had before the hunt began, no one protested when Tremane's men
claimed the "Imperial share." And in addition, while the hunts for monsters or feral cattle were going on, the Healer who always accompanied the expedition would tend to any illness or injuries among the natives.

In short, when the Imperial group returned to Shonar, they left behind a stockpile of much-needed meat, people who had received medical attention the like of which they had not seen since Ancar took the throne, and land that was now safer, if not as pastoral and tranquil as in generations before. If any new monsters appeared, the natives had only to request help again, and the entire scenario would be repeated.

Tremane would not give aid against wolves, bears, or bandits; the first
two, it was said, he had decreed were perfectly well within the means of the natives to deal with. And as for the third-he claimed that he could not tell the difference between bandits and "patriots," and he was not going to try.

This was a bit hard on the Hardornens who were suffering from the
depredations of fellow humans, but perhaps it gave them incentive to
track down those who had once been their neighbors and reintroduce them
to a law that had been long absent from Hardorn.

All of this was very impressive in tale and rumor-more impressive in
that the stories were remarkably consistent-but Elspeth waited to see
what was being said nearer to Shonar.

Finally, they came within that three-day sphere of Tremane's influence,
and they saw for themselves that the stories of Tremane's philanthropy"
were true.

Unexpectedly, they had stepped from a road cleared just enough to let a
single cart pass, to one which had been completely shoveled free of snow right down to the earth or gravel of the roadbed-and one which obviously was kept free of snow. They saw for themselves the trophy heads (or other parts) from the monsters that Tremane's men had tracked down and killed. And they heard from the natives who had been fed and Healed out of Tremane's bounty just what a good and just leader he was.

No one was mentioning the word "King" yet, but Elspeth sensed that it
was not far from anyone's thoughts. How could it be, when in the face of the worst times that Hardorn had ever experienced, this man was slowly imposing order and sanity on the face of the land? And it wasn't the arbitrary selfish order of a tyrant, either; they'd seen enough of that under Ancar to recognize it if they saw it. This was law and order that they could live with and be at peace with.

Elspeth couldn't help but contrast their lot with that of their fellow
countrymen who did not have the advantage of living within three days of Shonar. Reluctantly she had to admit that if she were in their boots, she'd have felt the same way.

More than that, she found herself agreeing with most of what he'd done
and ordered here. A few things represented laws or customs from the
Empire that she wouldn't have imposed, but the rest-it was just the hand and the mind of someone who was concerned about the welfare of the
people and knew how to derive the greatest good from a limited amount of resources.

The day before they were to meet with Duke Tremane himself, Elspeth and
Darkwind were approached by a solemn group of Hardornens as they ate
their evening meal. This time the innkeeper still tenanted his inn, but
it had been a long time since he had actually served guests. He had
offered a chance for Elspeth and Darkwind to have a quiet dinner
together, without the company of their escort, and the prospect was too
enticing to turn down.

He put them in a small, private dining room, with the troop seated in
the larger room outside. Elspeth had not realized how much she had
missed being able to talk to him without worrying about the ears of
others. There were things she had wanted to discuss that needed to wait
until they were alone in their room-if they were alone, since they often shared their sleeping quarters with the others.

They lingered over their last drink, making the most of this private
time-and that was when the innkeeper interrupted them.

"Town Council would like to talk, sir, lady," he said diffidently,
poking his head into the room. "Alone here, if you please?" Elspeth
sighed. She did not please, but there was no point in saying so. "If
they must," she replied, allowing some, but not all, of her annoyance to show.

The innkeeper vanished, and the delegation must have been waiting right
outside, for they trooped through the door immediately.

We won't take up much of your time, Envoy," said the best-dressed of the lot, a fellow who still boasted the velvets and furs of earlier
prosperity. "It's just something we'd like you to-to say for us, to Duke Tremane."

"Not a complaint!" added a second, only slightly less elegant than his
fellow. "No, not a complaint. Something he might want to hear, maybe-"

"There's been talk," the first interrupted, with a glare at the second.
"We've heard the talk. Oh, I was Guildmaster for the Wool and Weavers
Guild for this whole region-" Which explains the finery, Elspeth
thought.

"-and Keplan here was Master for the Leather and Furrier's Guild. So, as I say, there's been talk, and people have come to us with it. Duke
Tremane's proven good for us, and there are some that want to make him
our leader." The Guildmaster waved his hands expansively. "Some who are
even saying-" The second interrupted his fellow Guildmaster.
"Now, we've sent out word, looking for some of the old royal blood of Hardorn. We've got ways of sending word out farther and faster than you'd believe. And there's no one, not one person of the old Royal Family left alive."

"I can't say that amazes me," Elspeth told them dryly.

"Ancar wasn't one to tolerate rivals. And he wouldn't let a little thing like the age or sex of a possible pretender stop him from removing someone he wanted out of the way." The Woolmaster coughed. "Ah. Aye. And woe betide anyone that got in the way back then." He looked up hopefully to see if Elspeth agreed with this attempt to exonerate himself for not attempting to interfere. By that, she inferred that at least one opportunity had occurred, and he hadn't even tried.

But who am I to judge? I wasn't there, I don't know what happened. If he took the coward's path, his own guilty conscience may be punishing him enough by now.

"You were saying that there isn't anyone of the old royal blood left,"
she prompted. "So?"

"So-well-there's some consensus that we might offer Duke Tremane the
Crown. With conditions." He held his breath and waited for her reaction.

"An interesting proposal," Darkwind said quietly. "I presume that the
conditions would be unusual, since you mention them at all." The
Woolmaster switched his attention from Elspeth to Darkwind. "They could
be," he said. "it's-well, it's something our old Kings hadn't done for
generations. It's-"

"He'd have to take earth-binding," the furrier burst out. "We've got a priest of the old beliefs, one that knows the ceremony and can make it stick. He'd have to bind himself to the earth, to Hardorn, so that anything that hurt the land would hurt him!"

The Woolmaster stared at his fellow, appalled, but Elspeth only
shrugged. "It sounds like a sensible precaution on your part," she told
them. "And if the opportunity presents itself, we will convey your
message to the Grand Duke. But we can't promise anything, and we
certainly can't promise that he'll agree to any such thing."

"That's all we ask, Envoy!" the Woolmaster said, waving at his little
group and backing up himself, with a great deal of haste. "That's all!
Our thanks!" As he spoke, he herded the others out in front of him, and
with the last word, he shut the door to the dining room behind him.

Darkwind looked at Elspeth, and she grimaced. "Well," she said, into the heavy silence. "That was certainly interesting."

"And it leaves the question begging," he replied, with a rueful smile.
"Just how would one present such a proposition to Tremane?"

"I think that we can wait until we ride into Shonar itself, and we get a chance to see what the Empire represents-as molded by the hand of Grand Duke Tremane," she replied.

"That in itself will tell us whether or not there's any point."

Despite the icy wind cutting through her coat, Elspeth sat back in her
saddle and stared until her eyes hurt from snow glare. "I can't believe
they raised all this in a single season," she muttered.

And without magic," Gwena reminded her, shifting her weight in tiny
increments to keep muscles warm. "Granted, they did have a great deal of incentive-the possibility of hostile Hardornen troops attacking, and the certainty of monsters. What did that fine young man call them?"

"Boggles," Elspeth replied absently, taking in the reality of a
two-story-tall wall, and not a wooden palisade, mind, but a brick wall.
This edifice circled not only the entire city of Shonar but the much
larger camp and garrison of the Imperials, and an open sward that had
once been the town's grazing commons as well. A monumental task?
Without a doubt.

Then add to that the equally monumental task of constructing barracks
buildings for the Imperial forces before the snow fell, and it became a
job to stun the mind in its scope.

How had he gotten all that built? Where had he found all the laborers?

"We're very proud of our work, Siara," said the "fine young man" in
Imperial uniform who had met them half a day out of Shonar and escorted
them in. Siara was evidently the generic title of respect applicable to
either sex that the Imperial military used when the person doing the
addressing did not know the true rank of the one being addressed. It was probably the equivalent to "sir;" mercenaries generally addressed their officers as "sir" regardless of gender, a perfectly sensible approach of which Elspeth approved.

"We all worked on the walls and the barracks, every man of us, his
cheeks flushed in the cold," the young soldier continued. "Except when
some of us went to work on the harvest, and then we traded work with
townsfolk. However many it took to make up the work that one of us could do, that's what Duke Tremane traded, so the walls and the barracks could keep going up." Sensible. Did you notice? The boy says that Tremane "traded" work for work, not that he conscripted workers." Gwena's head was up as she made her own survey of the walls. "Granted, it wouldn't have been very smart to conscript workers for a wall you're building for your own protection, but that hasn't stopped rulers in the past from doing things equally stupid." Elspeth nodded; no point in confusing the poor fellow by answering someone he couldn't hear. The Imperials were already confused enough by her insistence on special treatment and housing for Gwena and the dyheli Brytha, although they had agreed to such a condition before a single Valdemaran set foot on the road to Shonar.

Darkwind cleared his throat gently. "As impressive as these walls are, I suspect our fellow travelers are as cold as I am, and we are not growing any warmer for standing here." The young soldier snapped to immediate attention and stammered an apology. "Of course, Siara, forgive me! We'll be on our way at once!" He nudged his own horse awkwardly with his heels, sending it ambling toward the gate ahead of them. He obviously at least to Elspeth's eyes) was not used to riding, and the horse was certainly not a cavalry mount; thick-legged, jugheaded, and shaggy it probably belonged to a farmer who didn't have any need for it in this season. He was probably grateful he hadn't had to ride out too great a distance to meet them; he handled the reins as if afraid the steady old gelding was going to rear and bolt at any second. The horse had no intention of doing so, he was just perfectly happy to be heading back to the city, a warm stall, and a good feed. She wouldn't hurt the poor boy's feelings by laughing at him, but she was very glad for the scarf wrapped around her face, concealing her mouth.

The guards patrolling the top of the wall looked down at them with
interest as they approached, though with no sign of alarm. There was
some nudging and pointing when those nearest caught sight of Darkwind's
dyheli, but that was to be expected.

For her part, Elspeth saw absolutely nothing to make her instincts issue an alarm. Except for the uniforms, these men could have been any force in any of the Alliance nations watching the envoy of one of the other Allies ride in. There was no show of hostility from them, and no sense of entrapment on her part. They went through the gate without a
challenge, and followed their guide through the main street of the city.
It was strange, after all these weeks of not hearing their mounts'
hooves do more than thud dully on the creaking snow, to ride once again
to the peculiar music that Gwena's silver hooves made as they chimed
against the cobblestones once they passed the wall, punctuated by the
staccato clicking of Brytha's cloven toes. Townsfolk, evidently warned
of their coming, gathered along the side of the street to cheer and wave welcomes and stare at Darkwind. She was reminded of the way they had last entered towns in Hardorn, as part of a traveling Faire. They hadn't stood out then in the midst of so much outlandish, gaudy, somewhat tarnished finery; probably onlookers had assumed that the dyheli had been an ordinary horse or pony in disguise. Now Darkwind had everyone's undivided attention, and to his credit, he seemed just as nonchalant as if there was no one gaping at all.

They passed several good-sized inns, and several more buildings that
might have quartered them, and came out on the other side of the town.
They were heading in the direction, not of the moundlike barracks
buildings, but of a stone edifice rising at least four stories in height in the main, with towers of five or six stories above that. It seemed they were to be quartered in this fortified manor Tremane had
appropriated as his headquarters; Elspeth wondered how many clerks,
officers, and other underlings had to be reshuffled to make room for
them. She was not going to be parted from her escort, and she doubted
that Tremane was going to be foolish or naive enough to expect anything
different, and that would mean displacing a fair number of people.

"The previous owner had a very small stable actually inside the. manor," the young soldier said, as they approached a second set of walls about the manor. "The entrance is on the courtyard, and it is situated beside the kitchen. The Duke's Horsemaster said he thinks it was for very valuable mares in foal. There are four loose-boxes, and it's warm enough for people to sleep in at need. Will that do for your-ah-mounts?" He looked questioningly at Brytha and Gwena, as if he still didn't understand what all the fuss was about.

For her part, Elspeth was just grateful that they'd not only found a
decent place for the nonhuman members of the delegation, but that it was gong to be within the same building complex. "That should be perfect." Now it was her turn to hesitate. "We're going to want to see to them before we are taken to our own quarters, or even meet with Grand Duke Tremane for the first time. I hope he will understand." The soldier's nod made it clear that he didn't think Tremane would understand, but that he was prepared to put up with the peculiarities of the Valdemarans.

Gwena chuckled in Elspeth's mind. "Never mind, dear. The only person we
have to persuade of my intellect is Tremane, and that won't take long.
And it can wait until tomorrow, he's going to have enough shocks today
as it is. Frankly, I'm more interested in a nice warm mash and a rest in a warm place than in meeting Tremane anyway."

Gwena surely was easier to live with these days. Or maybe I've finally
grown up! Elspeth chuckled to herself, allowing herself to relax the
tiniest amount. If there had been anything untoward, Gwena would
probably have sensed it.

The walls about the manor were much, much darker than the walls around
the city. These had been made of cut stone, like the manor itself, a
dark gray that somehow stopped just short of being depressing. There
were more guards on the top of these walls as well, but again, their
manner was casual.

While these men were professional, and ready to act on a moment's
notice, their manner led Elspeth to think they did not consider
themselves to be under any particular threat.

They entered a gate with an iron portcullis, but instead of passing
under the walls into the yard between the walls and the manor, they went
into an arched tunnel which actually passed under the walls of the
manor. Torches dispelled part of the gloom, but not all of it. Elspeth
did not miss noting the murder-holes in the ceiling above them, nor did
anyone else in their party. The holes were spaced so closely that if the
gates on either end of the tunnel were dropped, there would be no
escaping boiling oil or other unpleasantness coming out of those
apertures. This would have made her a great deal more nervous had the
manor not predated Tremane's arrival.

Not that he wouldn't use them, he just had not put them there in the
first place. The nasty mind that came up with them was a native
Hardornen.

Possibly one of Ancar's ancestors ... The delegation split exactly in
half once they were in the courtyard. Half of Vallen's troop took the
luggage to what was going to become their ambassadorial quarters, and
the other half remained with Darkwind and Elspeth while they saw to the
comfort of their mounts. Elspeth was just a little irritated at the
too-obvious guardians, but she was experienced enough to realize they
were a necessity. Until they really knew the situation here, it was
better to be too cautious and formal, and reinforce the Imperials'
perceptions of herself and Darkwind as people of diplomatic
importance-which, of course, they were.

Her irritation was short-lived, for Vallen and his people made
themselves useful instead of decorative, and things were soon settled in
the stables to the comfort and satisfaction of everyone. One of the
Imperials had remained to take them to their quarters, and with their
own guards trailing behind, she and Darkwind followed him across the
cobblestoned courtyard to one of the many entrances opening onto it.

"We've given you this tower," he said diffidently as he led them to a
staircase, his Hardornen stilted, and painfully correct "Duke Tremane
hopes it will suffice your needs.

"I believe it ought to," she replied, as they climbed to the first
residential floor. The half of their guards that had gone on ahead were
already making themselves at home. This was quite a spacious room,
furnished with beds and chests and not all that dissimilar from barracks
in Valdemar. The second floor was identical to the first, but untenanted
at the moment.

They continued to climb the staircase which wound around the outside
wall. "These will be your quarters, sir and lady," said their escort, as
they reached the third level.

They were standing in a public reception room set up on the third floor,
with a table and chairs suitable for conferences, with writing tables
and an arrangement of three comfortable chairs beside the fireplace.

"Your bedrooms and a study are on the fourth floor, and there is a
storage room on the fifth," their escort said. "I am one of Duke
Tremane's aides, and I will be at your disposal." As Elspeth and
Darkwind explored their personal quarters, he explained very seriously
that they did not really want to use that top floor for anything except
storage; it had no fireplace and was exposed to the winds in every
direction. After poking her nose up there and seeing a thin layer of
frost on the stones, Elspeth agreed.

Tremane gave them a decent period of time in which to get settled and
into presentable clothing. Elspeth very much missed the comforts of the
Palace at Haven; a hot bath here meant heating water over the fire in
kettles, and pouring it into a tub the servants brought into the
bedroom. The rest was just as primitive, and she wrinkled her nose at
the sight of the chamber pot. But the alternative could be worse...
and it wouldn't be the first time she and Darkwind had made do.

Finally, when they were presentable, Tremane sent another of his aides
to invite them to dinner with him.

As good a time and place to open relations with him as any. When
Darkwind gave her a little nod, she accepted for both of them, and they
followed the young man down the stair and into the main body of the
manor. They traveled down a dark and faintly chilled hallway for some
time, with their only light coming from lanterns mounted in brackets at
intervals along the wall. Finally they reached another stair, and the
aide led them up into what was clearly another tower. In fact, if this
tower held Tremane's quarters and was laid out in a similar manner to
theirs, they could probably look right into his bedroom from their own.

An interesting thought, and one which showed a measure of trust from
Tremane. If one could look, one could also shoot... They discovered, as
the aide ushered them into a room that corresponded to their own
reception room, that this was to be an informal meeting. The table was
set only for three, with a single aide standing by a sideboard full of
covered dishes.

Tremane was already waiting for them, and Elspeth scrutinized him
carefully, even as he was looking both of them over with the same care.

She would not have taken him for the brilliant military leader he was
supposed to be. He didn't look anything like a professional soldier-but
then, neither did half of Kerowyn's best fighters. He was losing his
mouse-brown hair, and what remained was going gray. His intelligent face
showed signs of age and strain both.

Tremane embodied contradiction. His shoulders were firmer and broader
than any clerk's, but there were ink stains on his right hand. He wore a
sword as one for whom it was a standard piece of attire, but there were
lines at the corners of his gray-brown eyes that people got when they
habitually squinted, trying to read in dim light. On the one
hand-scholar.

On the other-fighter.

He stood up after a moment, as if they had surprised him by arriving
sooner than he had expected, and extended his hand.

Elspeth found his expression impossible to read; closed, but somehow not
secretive. A gambler's face, perhaps, the face of a man unwilling to
give anything away.

But what his face might not reveal, other signs might. His clothing was
a variation on the Imperial uniform, but with none of the fancy
decorations she normally associated with someone of high rank. There was
just a badge with a coronet and another with what might be his own
device. Nowhere was there evidence of the imperial Seal or Badge,
although the badge of a crossed pen and sword looked as if it had been
sewn in place of a larger badge.

Come to think of it, no one I've seen wears the Imperial Badge. That,
more than anything else, told her he really had given over his
allegiance to the Empire. Soldiers set a great deal of store by what
device they fought under; if the Imperial Seal was gone, so was their
loyalty to what it represented.

The lack of decoration, though-military men took pomp and decoration for
granted. What did that lack of decoration say about Tremane? That he was
modest? Or that he wanted to appear modest?

Tremane extended his hand to her, and she clasped it, returning his
clasp strength for strength. He didn't test her, but his clasp was firm
and so was hers. "I am pleased to meet you at last, Princess," he began.
She shook her head, and he stopped in mid-sentence, tilting his head a
little to the side in what was probably a habitual gesture of inquiry.

"Not Princess, if you please," she corrected. "I renounced that title
some time ago in favor of other responsibilities.

"Envoy will do, or Ambassador, or even 'my Lady', although I do still
hold lands and title that are the equivalent to yours, Grand Duke. No
one in Valdemar even considers me as being in line for the throne
anymore." Must not let him think he's being slighted by having someone
sent to him who is of lesser rank.

"My partner and spouse, Darkwind k'sheyna, is an Adept; his people do
not have any equivalent titles specifying nobility," she continued, "But
we judged his status as a mage to be significant in place of a title."
Tremane nodded, released her hand, and took Darkwind's.

The two men gazed measuringly into one another's eyes before releasing
their grips.

"I am very pleased to meet you both at last, and I would deem it an
honor if you would dispense with titles and simply refer to me
as Tremane, as my people in my home lands did," the Grand Duke replied,
softening his formal manner with a slight smile. "Would you take a seat?
I fear you will find my fare somewhat plain, but these are not the times
for overindulging."

It was Darkwind who replied, as he held out a chair for Elspeth "I could not agree more, Tremane," he said. "But it does appear that the folk under your command are prospering better than most in Hardorn." Tremane waited until both of them were seated before he took his own chair. "That is as much a matter of luck as anything else,"
he replied. "Luck, in that we have one resource that Hardorn
lacks-manpower. There is enough to be scavenged if you have enough
able-bodied men." Tremane's aide offered Elspeth a simple dish of
vegetables baked with cheese, and she nodded in acceptance. As he
finished spooning a portion onto her plate and turned to Darkwind, she
took up the conversation. "Nevertheless, you have impressed those
natives here who live within your sphere of influence." Tremane took a
sip of his wine. "One of the virtues of the Empire is that its leaders
are well-trained," he said, after a moment. "Its vices are many, but it
is well-governed. At the best of times, its citizens had little to
complain of."

"And at the worst?" Darkwind asked bluntly.

Tremane bowed his head for a moment. "So much power is easily abused,"
he said finally, and applied himself to his food, ending the
conversation for the moment.

When it resumed, they spoke of inconsequential things.

Tremane was a decent conversationalist, though not a brilliant one. He
was not a courtier, or at least, not someone who devoted most of his
time to such pursuits. But he was also too careful to be blunt, too
practiced to say anything that might cause him or his people damage. He
was a survivor of a very dangerous Court, and he had learned his lessons in that Court well.

When they bid their host a cordial, if guarded, good night, Elspeth knew only one thing for certain.

Grand Duke Tremane was a man who kept his own council, and it would be
difficult to penetrate the walls he had built about himself. He would
clearly protect his honor by maintaining silence at judicious times, and practicing deflection when possible. Anyone who attempted to divine this complex man's deeper motives would find themselves with a nearly
impossible task, yet that was precisely the task Elspeth and Darkwind
faced.

Emperor Charliss sat enrobed in his heavy velvets of State, amid
the grim splendor of the panoply surrounding his Iron Throne. He endured the burden of the Wolf Crown pressing down upon his brow, ignored the content of the peoples' chatter, and watched his courtiers vainly attempt to conceal their jittery nerves.

Outwardly, this Court was like any other, except in degree.

Gossip, flirtations, negotiations, assignations, betrayals,
Confidences the highborn, ranked and wealthy, all danced their dances
just as they had for years, as their fathers had, and as their
grandfathers had. Over the years their forms of jockeying and
presentation had gone from custom to manners to mannerism, tempered by
fashion and fear. Today, each attempted to hold their clothing and their overly-expensive accessories in their practiced ways, but their true state showed in their stilted movements, the nervous glances toward his dais, and in the faintly hysterical edge to their voices as they murmured to one another. His Court had always been noted for flamboyance of dress, but fewer and fewer of his courtiers were taking the time and care needed for truly opulent displays, which showed more clearly than any other outward signs that their minds and energies were directed elsewhere. They were afraid, and people who were afraid did not concern themselves with inventing a new fashion or impressing an enemy with their wealth.

Below the dais, people milled in the patterns dictated by rank and
custom, but he was acutely aware of the holes in the patterns. The Court
itself held little more than half the usual number of attendees. How
could it be otherwise? Those who could leave for their estates already
had, despite the fact that the Season was well underway.

This was wildly contrary to custom; no one who pretended to power or
importance left the Court in winter. Summer was the time when the
highborn of the Empire retired to their estates, not winter. Winter,
that time of the year when snow and ice barricaded the isolated estates,
one from the other, was the time to take one's place at Court and engage
in revelry and endless intrigue, while one's underlings dealt with the
tedium of estate caretaking, and become immersed in the round of social
intercourse known as the Season. Those with youngsters to marry off
brought them here to display them to the parents of other youngsters or
potential older spouses.

Those who wanted power jockeyed for position; those who had it
campaigned to keep it. Those who pursued pleasure came here to pursue
it. Only the impossibly dull, preoccupied, or solitary remained in their
homes during the Season.

But not this winter.

When the first of the mage-storms had come sweeping out of nowhere
across the Empire, disrupting or destroying all the magic in its path
except that which was heavily shielded, the Emperor had been angry, but
not seriously alarmed. Such a powerful work of magic could not have been
easy to create, and he had not expected that the senders would be able
to repeat it at any time soon. Granted, it had taken down every one of
the Portals that were the fundamental means of long-range transportation
across the Empire, but it had been possible to set them back up again in
a relatively short period of time. The Storm had caused inconvenience,
but no more. He had never had any doubt that the mages of the Empire
would restore conditions to normal, and then he would deliver a
punishment to the fools who sent such a thing. This punishment would
send terror not only through their ranks, but into the hearts of anyone
else even peripherally involved.

But then, without any warning, the second Storm had passed over the face of the Empire. That had been impossible, by the rules of all magic as he knew it. And then came a third.

And after that Storm had passed, still more, and the intervals between
them kept decreasing, even as the magnitude of the

damage that each wrought increased.

The courtiers might not have been aware of the damage that was being
done in the Empire as a whole, but they were certainly aware of the
impact on their own lives. Mage-fires heating their rooms and baths no
longer functioned. Magelights vanished, and had to be replaced by
inferior candles and lanterns, normally only used by laborers to light
their hovels.

Meals, even in Crag Castle were often late, and frequently cold. One
could no longer commandeer a Portal to bring something from one's home
Estate. There were servants enough that discomforts were rectified to a
certain extent-but not entirely. Those in the Court that had no truly
pressing need to be here, and who had the intelligence to see what might happen if conditions continued to deteriorate, found reasons and the means to get home.

By now it was next to impossible to maintain anything of a magical
nature without exhaustive work on shields, and every time another
Storm-wave passed, those shields were so eroded that they required
intensive repair. Transportation within the Empire was at a standstill,
and communication sporadic at best. Physical constructions such as
buildings and bridges that had incorporated static magics into their
construction had crumbled. Every structural disaster created more
disruption and fear, and sometimes involved great loss of life. Nor was
that the only physical effect of the Storm-waves; great pieces of land
had been changed out of all recognition, and bizarre monsters were
appearing as if conjured out of the air itself.

Migrating birds had altered their patterns, or flew entirely lost.
Wide-leafed plants as tall as men, stinging to the touch, grew
inexplicably from stonework and soil alike, and all over the capital and
nearby provinces, vines strangled horses in the night. Carcasses of
creatures that looked like nothing of this world were brought in as
proof that these Storms were only making their world stranger and more
horrifying with each passing day.

By this time anyone who stood the slightest chance of reaching his or
her Estate by purely physical means had left the Court. At home, a
courtier would at least have reasonable foodstocks at hand, and many had
Estates that relied on old fashioned, nonmagical, purely
physical sources of heat, light, and sanitation. One irony was that the
poorer and less pretentious of the courtiers, who had not had the spare
means to spend on magical amenities in their estates, were now the least
uncomfortable of their peers. As perilous as life on the Estates could
become now, with monstrous creatures attacking without warning or
provocation, the wise and forethinking knew it was not only possible,
but probable, that life in the capital would become far more dangerous.
How long before food riots set the disaffected against the wealthy?

Charliss gazed upon his courtiers through narrowed eyes, and his
normally inscrutable face betrayed some of his annoyance.

He wondered if these who were left realized just how perilous life here
could become. There were a remarkable number of very foolish people here
now; people he had heard saying some amazingly silly things. "I come
here to the Season at Court to forget the world outside these walls,"
one woman had said testily in his hearing. "I don't care to hear
anything about it while the Season is on; I have more important things
to think about-I have balls to attend and five marriageable daughters to
dispose of!" But the world outside the walls of Crag Castle was
vanishing, even as that woman danced and displayed her offspring, and no
amount of willful ignorance was going to change that.

Already those outlying provinces of the Empire that had but lately come
under the rule of the Iron Throne had revolted, regaining their
independence. Charliss did not know, in most cases, what had become of
the imperial forces that had been stationed there. Some few had made
their way back to lands that were still within Imperial sway, but others
had vanished into the silence. Perhaps they had revolted along with
those they were supposed to rule; but more likely they had been
slaughtered, or had merely surrendered and were now prisoners.

He did not know, nor did anyone else. Reluctantly, he was forced to
admit to himself in recent days that his Empire, powerful and vast, had
one particular fatal flaw. It was entirely optimized toward controlling
any and all threats from inside itself-from riots to political intrigue-
to civil war-but was pathetically unprepared for outside disrupting
influences such as these Storms.

Within the Empire itself, with transportation reduced to the primitive
level of horse and cart, matters were degenerating much faster than he
could prop them up. Food was the most critical item, usually imported
into the cities all winter long from the Estates that supplied it,
foodstuffs were running short as even Imperial storehouses were emptied.
Food was getting into the cities, brought by individual farmers or
carters a sledgeload at a time, but there were not only distances to
consider, but the dreadful winter storms as well. Prices for perishable
items were trebling weekly, with the cost of staples following suit,
though more slowly since he had ordered Imperial stockpiles to be put on
the market to stabilize prices. In some cities food riots had already
broken out, and he had ordered the Imperial troops to move in to quell
the unrest by whatever means necessary.

At least on the Estates, which were used to supporting themselves. there
was plenty of food in storage, and most nobles had their own personal
forces to maintain order. There would be more cooperation than
competition among their dependents and underlings, if a lord or lady was
a wise governor of his or her property. If not, well, they would get
what was coming to them.

There had already been extensive rioting in those cities where major
public aqueducts, maintained by magic, had collapsed, leaving the entire
city with no source of fresh water.

He had been able to repress news of those riots, but he was not certain
just how long he would be able to repress news of food riots if they
became widespread. Somehow, when news was bad, it always managed to
spread no matter how difficult the circumstances.

It was not the weight of the Wolf Crown pressing down on his brow that
made his head ache, it was the weight of the misfortune.

Why am I the Emperor upon whom all this is visited? Why could it not
have waited for my successor?

One bizarre effect of these disasters on the citizens of the Empire-as
if there were not enough bizarre effects already-was that strange
religious cults were springing up all over what was left of the Empire.
It seemed as if every city had its own pet prophet, most of them
predicting the end of the world---or at least of the world as the
citizens of the Empire had known it. Every cult had its own peculiar
rites and proposed every possible variation on human behavior as the
only" means of salvation. Some preached complete asceticism, some
complete license. Some advocated a single deity, some attributed spirits
to every object and natural phenomena, living or not.

Some sent the most devoted out to sacrifice themselves to marauding
monsters in the hopes of appeasing whatever had sent those monsters-but
of course nothing was ever appeased but the appetite of the particular
monster, and that was only a temporary condition. Needless to say, those
cults did not long survive, for either their followers grew quickly
disillusioned and abandoned their leaders, or they grew quickly angry
and fed their leaders to those same monsters.

The cults neither worried nor really concerned Charliss, even though
many of them had recruited untaught or ill taught mages, and were raising
impressive, though short-lived, power. He left it to his own corps of
mages to deal with that power or drain it. He left the day-to-day
emergencies in the hands of his underlings, mostly from the military. He
had more personal concerns; most of his attention these days was taken
up with his own well-being, even his own survival, both of which were in
great jeopardy. He had depended on reliable and consistent magic to
maintain those spells keeping him alive and healthy after two centuries
of life, and magic was neither reliable nor consistent anymore.

He could die before he was ready, and he had come chillingly close to it more than once. That, above all, was something he wanted no one to
learn.

Many of his courtiers were mages, and he wondered how tempting it would
be for one of them to take advantage of his precarious situation. He was under no illusions about the ultimate loyalty of his courtiers; he had once been one of them, and like them. his ultimate loyalty had been only to himself. There were two sorts of folk out there in the Great Hall now; those who were still here because they were fools, and those who were still here because they saw opportunities.

The latter were drastically more dangerous than the former, and he never forgot that.

He had been able to keep his own existence from being eroded by keeping
the heaviest of shields upon himself, but he required an increasing
number of lesser mages to do that, and he lost more ground every time
another wave of Storms passed. Not even his corps of mages knew just how delicately his life was hanging in the balance.

At the moment, he had managed to keep the fact that there was even the
slightest thing wrong with him a secret. His courtiers did not seem to
notice any difference in his appearance, but it was only a matter of
time before some sharp-eyed individual-or one with a good network of
informants-learned that all was not well with the Emperor by assembling
all of the small hints into one concise answer. The moment that
happened, the panic in the cities would be replicated in miniature in
the Court, unless Charliss could quickly exert total control over every
courtier here. How could he do that, when every spare iota of time and
energy was spent bolstering his failing reserves? He felt events
slipping like sand between his fingers, and his very helplessness raised a rage in him that was as powerful as it was futile.

My Empire is disintegrating beneath me. Soon I may not have an Empire; I may consider myself fortunate to still retain a I . n om-or a city-or my But he did not despair. Despair was an emotion for weaklings and
failures, with no place in the heart of the one who wore the Wolf Crown.
Anger, a cold fire in his belly, rose in him until he felt he had to
find a direction for it or burn away.

The realization of how his anger should be channeled rolled in and
struck like a thunderbolt in his mind. He knew precisely where to place
the blame for this situation, and his anger pointed like a poisoned
arrow into the West and the home of his enemy.

Valdemar.

There could be only one source for his troubles, for the mage-storms and
all they had wrought. Nothing like this had ever happened before he sent
Tremane to finish taking Hardorn and consider taking the Kingdom of
Valdemar which lay beyond Hardorn. Valdemar did not have magic as the
Empire knew it, and yet they had defended themselves successfully
against all of Ancar's magical attacks. The rulers of Valdemar had
prevented his own agents from penetrating its borders for decades with
great success; only a handful had obtained any intelligence, only three
informants had ever gotten into the Court itself. Two of the three had
not been mages, which had seriously hampered their effectiveness, and
the third had been forced to forgo magic while she remained within the
borders, which had the same effect. Valdemar had allied itself with
foreigners as weird as any of the monsters currently springing up
everywhere-with the grim. Shin'a'in and the alien Hawkbrothers, with the
monotheistic fanatics of Karse. Valdemar would be the only power to have
come up with so completely unpredictable a weapon. The fact that-at
least at last report Valdemar and her Allies were not suffering the
effects of the Storms only confirmed his "revelation." Surely only the
people who had sent out such an encompassing weapon would know how to
defend against it affecting them as well.

Besides, Valdemar had murdered his agents and envoys.

That, he had personal proof of, for they had fallen through the Portal
from Hardorn with daggers bearing the Royal Seal on the pommel-nuts. His
advisers differed in their opinions on whether or not this had
represented a deliberate provocation, an act of war, or simply a
challenge, but there was no difference of opinion on whose hand had done
the deed. It had to be someone actually in the Royal Household, either
the Heir or the personal agent of the Queen, not just any provocateur or Herald.

Tremane, parked on the very doorstep of Valdemar, had agreed with that
assessment, but the measures that he had taken to disrupt the Alliance
had gone seriously amiss.

Or had they?

It could be that he had never taken those measures at all, that he had
concocted the story of his tame assassin out of whole cloth. Had he been
planning to defect to the Valdemaran Alliance all along, in the hope
that they would give him a Kingdom, when he saw that he could not win
the war with the Hardornen rebels?

That would make very good sense, considering that Charliss had made the
promise of the position of Imperial Heir contingent on whether or not
Tremane won Hardorn-the whole of Hardorn-for the Empire.

Given the choice between coming home in disgrace

barely retaining his own Duchy-and winning himself a Kingdom, it could
have been an easy decision.

All this was speculation, of course, but Charliss did have certain facts
to guide him. Without question, Tremane had revolted, looting an
Imperial supply depot, declaring to his men that the Empire had deserted
them, and making common cause with the Hardornens he had been sent to
subdue.

Chances were that the Valdemarans had persuaded him, perhaps had even
given him the idea to revolt in the first place.

Tremane had been the best choice Charliss had from among those to whom
he had offered the opportunity to earn the Heir's Coronet. Tremane was
no fool, but nothing in his makeup had given Charliss the impression
that he could be induced to revolt. He was intelligent, but not
particularly imaginative. Yet one agent who had made his way across
country against impossible odds had painted a very clear picture of
Grand Duke Tremane's traitorous words and deeds.

That betrayal was as bitter as any experience in Charliss' long life and
reign, and it would not go unpunished. It was a pity that Tremane had
left no potential hostage in the form of a wife or child at Court, and
that his Estate was so far away on the borders of the Empire that
reaching it to despoil it was about as practical as going after Tremane
himself. Of course, Charliss could and would assign it to someone else,
but that was an empty gesture, and both he and the recipient would be
well aware of that. No one would be able to get there until late spring
at best, and if the Empire continued to fall apart, they might as well
not try.

Still, a gesture would have to be made, hollow or not. These people
below him, fools though they were, would have to be shown once again
that he was the Emperor, and he was not to be trifled with.

He signaled to his majordomo, who rapped his staff three times on the
marble of the floor to gain the Court's attention.

Nothing disturbed the icy tranquility of the majordomo's demeanor; men
had been cut down by the imperial Guards at his very feet and he had not
turned a hair. Arrayed in a splendor of purple velvet and gold bullion
embroidery, and bearing the wolf-headed Imperial Staff which stood
taller than he was, no mage-made homunculus or clockwork manikin could
have been more controlled than he.

So completely did his office subsume him that Charliss did not even know his name.

Silence fell immediately with the first rap, so that the next two echoed
down the hall with the impact of Death himself rapping on a door. All
eyes turned at once to the Iron Throne, and Charliss stood up to face
them all, his heavy robes dragging at his shoulders. He braced his
calves against the Throne, grateful for the invisible support.

He could have had the majordomo make the announcements, but that would
lessen the impact, and it might give the impression that he was no
longer vigorous. He could not have that, especially not now. He must
appear to be as powerful now as the day he took the Throne.

His voice echoed portentously out over the crowd of courtiers, amplified
and rendered more imposing by clever acoustical design around the dais.
"Intelligence has reached Our ears that gravely grieves and angers Us,"
he said sternly into the silence. "We have received news from an
unimpeachable source that Tremane, Grand Duke of Lynnai, has turned
traitor to the Empire, to his vows, and to Us." The gasps of surprise
that rippled through the Court were not feigned, and only confirmed
Charliss' impression that those courtiers still remaining were for the
most part not among his brightest and best. He scanned for a few
particular faces, men and a few women who were numbered among his
advisers-and there was no surprise or shock registering there.

Good. It's agreeable to know that I haven't chosen any complete idiots.

"There can be no doubt of his intent or his thoughts," Charliss
continued, as the gasps and murmurs died down again.

"He has orchestrated the looting of an Imperial storage depot for his
own profit, including the contents of the exchequer there, monies
intended to pay the faithful soldiers of the Empire their just and
well-earned stipends." He cast a glance at the stiff figures lining the
walls. Ah, my own guards are looking black at that one. Good. Word will
spread through the rest of the Army, and may the Hundred Little Gods
help him if he shows his face where a single Imperial soldier can find
him. Of all the truths in the Empire guaranteed to preserve life, limb,
and prosperity, this was the truest: Pay the Army, pay it well, and pay
it on time.

Charliss permitted a touch of his anger to show on his face and in his
voice. "He has declared his allegiance to the Empire at an end, and has
subverted his troops, entrusted to him, to renounce their oaths as well.
He has broken off hostilities with the rebels of Hardorn, has entered
into unlawful and traitorous alliance with them, and is acting in all
ways to have set himself up as King of that benighted land." Shaking
heads and avid looks told him that every one of the power seekers still
gathered here was hoping for profit from Tremane's downfall. Well, in
the void left when a great tree fell, little trees could climb to reach
the sun. Even in these strange days, that might still come to pass.

Now, however, was the time to alert these idiots to their danger. "Worst
of all, he has entered into alliance with the vile and duplicitous
monarch of Valdemar, which nation has sent unprovoked assaults by magic
lately against this, our peaceful Empire." He paused for a breath,
steadying himself against the Throne under cover of his robes. That last
was only supposition, but even those with intelligence networks the
near-equal of his could not be certain of that, and really, would not
care. Tremane had no friends here; those who had been nominally his
allies would be scrambling for new men to attach themselves and their
fortunes to. And proving that the current misfortunes had a recognizable
origin might consolidate some of these idiots into a cohesive whole.
There was nothing quite like a common enemy to make a force out of
disparate and bickering parties.

Now to show them that the old lion had teeth. He put on his most
dreadful look, the one that left even hardened guards with trembling
hands and quaking knees, and made his next words thunder out like the
pronouncement of some barbarian god. "We therefore declare Tremane of
Lynnai a traitor, his title and lands forfeit, and his name anathema! We
pronounce upon him the sentence of death, to be executed by any that
have the means and opportunity! Let no loyal citizen of the Empire aid
him, on pain of that same sentence; let his name be stricken from the
rolls of his family, and let the House of Lynnai die with his father!
Let his name be chiseled from monuments of battle. be erased from the
records of the Empire. and let it be as if he never was born!" That was
the harshest sentence possible to pronounce within the Empire, and no
few faces below him turned pale.

For most of these people, this erasure was worse than a sentence of
execution, for it extended Tremane's punishment into the Hereafter. If
and when Tremane did die, he would have no immortality, for without some
record on earth of who and what he had been, his soul would vanish at
the moment of his death, or would wander aimlessly in the cheerless,
empty limbo between earth and the afterlife, without any knowledge of
who it had once been ... Or so it was believed. When a citizen of the
Empire believed anything. he believed in the immortality of records;
when he worshiped anything, he always included his ancestors. To remove
someone from his rightful place among his ancestors was to remove a
piece of the very cosmos.

Charliss smiled grimly. Now they know I haven't gone soft, just because
I was prepared to name a possible Heir.

He allowed his expression to soften. "We know that this has come as a
great shock to all Our loyal subjects, the more especially as the
Nameless One had been put forth as the potential Heir to the Imperial
Crown. Such a betrayal harms you as well as Us, by threatening the
security of the Empire. We would not see Our children distressed by the
taint of betrayal mingled with uncertainty. Therefore, We now do name
Our successor, and bestow on him all those lands, goods, and titles that
were once the property of the Nameless One." The looks of greed and
avidity were back-though only briefly, and quickly controlled. At this
moment, no one knew who Charliss was going to name, least of all the
recipient.

Once Tremane had been designated, Charliss had taken pains to show no
partiality to anyone else; he had wanted to give Tremane as fair a
playing field as possible in a Court as filled with intrigue as this
one. And besides, by not showing favor to any one person. he had
virtually opened up the field-if Tremane failed to conquer Hardorn-to
anyone. The scrambling and jockeying had been most amusing when he'd had
the leisure to take note of it. Every one of his advisers had the
potential to be named Heir as far as anyone knew, and several of his
mages as well. Those who thought themselves in the running were moving
up through the crowd, almost without realizing that they were doing so,
attempting to place themselves nearer the Throne, where he could see
them better.

But his thoughts were wandering, the suspense was about to send one or
two out there into a fit of apoplexy.

He had to end the suspense, although there would be several who were
shocked or affronted at his choice. Nevertheless, Melles had been his
second choice before he sent Tremane off to conquer Hardorn, and Melles
had remained in that position all along. "We therefore do name as
successor and Heir, the most worthy and knowledgeable adviser and most
loyal servant of the Empire, Court Baron Melles." He had just named
Tremane's most fervent and implacable enemy. And if anyone was going to
put in the astounding effort it would take merely to attempt to execute
the Imperial death sentence on Tremane, it would be Melles. There was
real hatred between the two of them, a hatred more powerful than
Charliss had witnessed in a very long time. There was not much room for
hatred in the Imperial Court; it was better to keep emotions
superficial, for today's enemy might be tomorrow' s ally.

Melles had been standing just to one side of the dais, visible, but
unobtrusive, as was his normal habit. He was a slightly better-looking
version of Tremane in some ways; thinner and not as muscular, with none
of the physical attributes of a fighter. He was not balding; his hair
was darker, and he was two or three years Tremane's junior. Otherwise,
though, they could have been cut from the same cloth and sewn by the
same tailor. Both of them had cultivated the art of being ignored and
overlooked, though Charliss suspected that their motives for this
differed greatly. He knew what Melles' motives were; now, in retrospect,
he could guess at Tremane' s.

Melles was not a hereditary noble like Tremane; he was a Court Baron, a
man with a title but no lands, as his father had been before him.
Melles' wealth came from trade, as did the wealth of most of the Court
nobles, although the commodity that Melles bought and sold was quite
unlike that of his livestock brokering father. It was no secret that an
ambitious tradesman with enough ready cash could buy a Court title for
himself, and with further applications of his wealth could arrange for
the title to be inherited by his son. There was no shame in this-though
many of the Court nobles were extraordinarily touchy about their titles,
and many of the landed gentry made no secret of the fact that they
considered the Court nobles to be purest upstarts. There was some
friction between the two factions, although it was quite astonishing how
quickly that friction vanished when a family with title but no fortune
was presented with the heir or heiress to a fortune with no title as a
matrimonial prospect.

Was that how the enmity had begun between Tremane and Melles? Had
Tremane, or Tremane's father, snubbed Melles or Melles' father? It
seemed unlikely that such hatred could spring from so trifling a cause.
Oddly enough, Charliss could not imagine Tremane being rude to anyone,
not even to someone he held in contempt. Tremane had always been too
clever to make such enemies casually.

Well, it didn't really matter now. whatever the cause, it served the
Emperor's ends.

Barron-now Grand Duke-Melles moved forward out of the knot of courtiers
at the very foot of the steps leading to the dais. He stood alone for a
moment, then walked with solemn deliberation up the three steps
permitted to one of his new title, bowing his head and going to his knee at the fourth.

Charliss motioned to the guard at his right to bring up the coronet of
the Heir from the niche at the side of the dais where it had resided
since Charliss himself had resigned it to put on the Wolf Crown.

Although the acts of this ceremony appeared spontaneous, it was anything
but. It was another dance, the steps dictated by the custom of ages
past, every move choreographed centuries ago. Only the participants in
the dance changed, never the steps themselves.

Even the guard who brought the coronet to Melles had rehearsed just this
action a thousand times, even though there was no telling which guard
would be directed to retrieve the circlet, nor who it would be given to.
It was simply a part of an Imperial Guard's duty, rehearsed along with
every other part.

The guard performed flawlessly, handing the circlet to Melles, who in
accordance with tradition, solemnly crowned himself, just as he would
crown himself with the Wolf Crown when Charliss died. Power and
authority in the Empire came from within the man, and were not bestowed
by the hands of priests, and in token of that, every Emperor and Heir
bestowed the trappings of power upon himself.

Once crowned-not that the coronet was all that imposing, just an iron
circlet in the shape of a sword, with a topaz matching those in the Wolf
Crown set as the pommel-nut-Melles stood up, and bowed to his Emperor.
Charliss surveyed him with satisfaction, thinking that he probably
should have chosen Melles in the first place. Unlike Tremane, Melles was
a powerful Adept who could, with a few decades of practice, be Charliss'
equal in magic. Given that, and despite current conditions, it was just
barely possible that Melles would contrive to bring back Tremane's head.

Charliss mentally resolved to resign on the spot if Melles managed to
pull that one off. Not that he considered it likely, but such diligence
would deserve a reward, and there wasn't much else Charliss would be
able to give him.

And if he can do that, he'll be strong enough to take the Wolf Crown
from me. It would be better to resign it with grace, and concentrate on
keeping myself alive.

No matter how powerfully his enemies among the courtiers would gladly
have plunged daggers into Melles' heart at that moment, not one of them
would betray himself. "Go and take your well-deserved congratulations
from Our Court," Charliss directed with cool approval. "We will discuss
your new duties and privileges later." Melles bowed, and backed down the
steps. There was no throne for the Heir, nor any special place for him
at Court ceremonies. Emperors of the past had not deemed it necessary or
advisable to give their Heirs too much power or the appearance of it
lest they acquire an addiction to it and crave more.

As Melles turned at the foot of the steps to face those thronging to
greet him, Charliss decided that the Emperors of the past had been very
wise. Melles could certainly be one of those who would crave more than
his just due.

Charliss decided to keep him on a short leash, as he watched the dance
of power begin swirling about this new center.

One Tremane was enough, after all.

Melles had often thought, of late, that there had been so many upheavals
that there was nothing that could evoke the feeling of surprise in him
anymore. And although his intelligence network was extraordinary-in
fact, it had been one of his spies who had brought word of Tremane's
defection back to Crag Castle-he really had not expected to be named
Charliss' Heir.

According to his own calculations, he wasn't the logical candidate, even
though there were personal considerations involved.

Since the onset of the mage-storms and the consequent disasters spread
over the entire Empire, it had seemed to him that the Emperor would have
to name someone who had absolutely no enemies at Court whatsoever.
Whoever came after Charliss would have to cope with a much-reduced
Empire, revolt everywhere, a possibly hostile Army; he would have to
somehow convince the worst of enemies to act together and forge
alliances until the Empire was stable again.

Melles had far too many enemies who would rather die than work with him
in any way; Tremane was not the only one, nor was he even the most
deadly. Melles was a man who made enemies far more easily than allies.
On the whole, he preferred enemies, for it was much easier to manipulate
them than allies, and there was never the risk of disillusion when they
realized they had been manipulated.

Friends were quite out of the question; a friend was a potential hole in
one's armor, and he had not permitted himself such a weakness since he
became a man. Then there was the matter of his position and duties under
Charliss, which did not endear him to anyone. He could not think of a
single person who liked him in the entire Court. Many feared him, some
admired him grudgingly, others tolerated him as a necessary evil, but no
one liked him.

But there they all were, flocking to fawn on him as if they couldn't
wait to become his best friend. Some of them, in fact, might very well
have plans in that direction, foolish as such plans might be. He was,
after all, surrounded by fools; they wouldn't be here now if they
weren't.

He smiled and accepted their congratulations with an expression that
suggested that he would be eager to become their best friend. Why not?
Even fools had their uses, and just like the Emperor who had bestowed
his new title, he had never been the kind who threw away a potential
tool.

The men thronged about him first, jostling one another in their
eagerness to say something that he might remember later, reminding him
of past favors they had done for him, offering favors for the future. It
was quite astonishing& the sort of things they considered to be
"favors;" he could not for a moment imagine why anyone could think that
invitations to incredibly boring social gatherings featuring meaningless
entertainments would ever be sought after.

And the women! They were worse than the men! If they were unmarried,
they were pressing about him with looks and poses that were just short
of open invitations to do as he pleased with them. If they were anything
other than blissfully, happily married (and there were damned few of
those at Court, especially now!) they were behaving the same. If they
had daughters of anything resembling marriageable age-and plenty of
these women had very liberal ideas about what constituted " marriageable
age"-they were alluding to their daughters' admiration of him, and
dangling invitations on their behalf.

As if any of them had the faintest notion who I am or what I look
like-No, that was unfair, Not all of these people were here because they
were blind idiots who wouldn't have their Season spoiled by a few petty
disasters. Some were here because they couldn't get back to their
Estates, others because of their positions as Imperial Advisers, and
some because they had no Estates.

There were young girls-and not so young girls-who knew very well who he
was and what he looked like, as they knew the identities, properties,
and titles of every unwedded man expected to be at Court this Season.
That was part of their duty, as they and their parents went about the
serious business of husband hunting. He might not have been very high on
their list of desirable matches until now, but they knew who he was.

And if he made an appearance at a private party, a musical evening, or
other entertainment, each of them would proceed with grim determination
to try to convince him that nothing would make him happier than to take
her as his lawfully wedded soon-to-be-Empress.

That no less than an hour ago most if not all of these maidens would
have cheerfully confessed that the idea of wedding him made them ill was
of no consequence now.

Look how these same women throw themselves at Charliss the old mummy! It
isn't his handsome face that makes them act like shameless cows in
season around him. Furthermore, Melles was well aware that if he had
evidenced any preference for young men he would still be under siege
from these women and their parents. After all, he would still be
expected to try to produce an Heir of his body. The fact that only about
half of the Emperors of the past had been the physical offspring of
their predecessor didn't matter, he would still be expected to try.

And if some of what I've read in the private Archives is true, some of
them went to some fascinating extremes in trying ... Well, that didn't
matter either. He wasn't a lover of men or boys, and not of little girls
either. But he would wait until he wore the Iron Crown himself before he
took a wife, and when he did, his first choice would be an orphan with
no living family left whatsoever, just for spite!

"Yes, of course," he murmured to one of the women-after being certain
that he was not agreeing to anything of importance.

It would be a grand joke on all of them if he selected his bride from
among the common citizens. It would certainly be easy to find an
attractive orphan there!

He whispered an aside to one of the other advisers, a man who had been a
disinterested ally in the past. This is all going to my head. There will
be time to think about women later,. now is the time to concentrate on
consolidating my base of power, and determining what can best be done to
get the Empire through this crisis.

Pleasures of all sorts would have to wait until the Empire was stable.
Perhaps sometime in the future there might even be an opportunity to
execute the Emperor's sentence of death on Tremane. But that time was
not now, and he would wait for it to come to him. Hatred was an emotion
that brought him a great deal of energy and entertainment, and he
enjoyed it.

it was not for nothing that his enemies often compared him to a spider
sitting in the middle of a web. If there was one virtue he possessed, it
was patience, for patience was the only virtue that eventually brought
rewards.

Now that the dance of courtiers and Court was over and the business of
the Empire had been disposed of in Council, Melles got his private
audience with the Emperor. Private? Well, not precisely; the Emperor was
never alone. But no one of any pretense to wealth or rank in the Empire
ever really noticed servants or bodyguards unless, of course, that person
was Melles, or someone like him. To the Emperor, without a doubt, they
were invisible. To Melles they were possible spies.

The subject of conversation, as befitting the position and duties of the
new Heir, was the state of the Empire. Melles was not particularly
surprised to discover that Charliss had less information on this subject
than he did. The Emperor had not been concerned with the day-to-day
workings of his Empire for decades; he had been able to leave that to
his underlings.

In Melles' opinion, he no longer had that luxury. "My Lord Emperor,"
Melles said patiently. "It seems to me that you have been insufficiently
acquainted with the desires and needs of the common man." They compare
me to a spider in its web, Melles thought dispassionately, as he watched
the old man glare at him over the expanse of a highly-polished black
marble table. They should see him when he is not playing his role. He
looks like an ancient turtle deciding whether or not to stick his nose a
fraction more outside his shell.

Inside the sheltering back and arms of the Emperor's thronelike chair,
that was precisely what Charliss resembled.

And, like the turtle, Melles suspected that the Emperor really did want
to pull himself back into his shell entirely.

He did not seem disposed to learn, or deal with, the basic changes in
the Empire, and that fit with Melles' plans. So what I need to do is to
persuade him that not only is that a good idea for him, but also that he
can trust power in my hands. Melles already had a great deal of power;
he had been in charge of dealing out whatever punishments the Emperor
deemed necessary for many years now. Not quite an Executioner, and
considerably higher in status than a mere lawkeeper, when something
unfortunate occurred to a member of the Court and the Emperor took
special notice of it, everyone knew whose hand had been behind seeming
accidents or twists of fate. Melles' value to the Emperor lay in making
certain that it was impossible to prove anything when such accidents
occurred.

The "accidents" weren't always supposed to be fatal, or at least not
fatal to the physical body. Sometimes ruin suited the Emperor better
than death, whether it be the ruin of a reputation or of a fortune. A
ploy that Melles particularly favored was to contrive romantic liaisons
that were entirely disastrous; it was amazing what people would do to
prevent their follies from becoming widely known when that folly
involved sexual favors, infatuation, or a combination of the two.

"Just what exactly do you mean by that?" the Emperor asked querulously.

Melles spread his hands wide. "I mean, Lord Emperor, that the common man
is an extremely simple creature. You are thinking of him now in terms of
the mob, which is a being with many arms and legs and no head, and as a
consequence behaves in ways no rational man can predict. I am thinking
of him as he is before he devolves to that mindless, intractable state."
He tilted his head to one side; that had been a much longer speech than
he usually gave to the Emperor, and he had learned to make certain that
the Emperor always had openings in which to insert his own comments.

"So what is the so-called common man, when he isn't in a mob?" the
Emperor mocked.

Melles was not about to let his own mask of serenity slip.

Such mockery was as much a test as Tremane's assignment had been.

And I am not likely to be lulled by the illusion that I am the Emperor's
only executioner. If he perceives me as a failure, I will not live long
enough to rebel.

He inclined his head a little; not quite a bow, but enough to
acknowledge his subservience even as he "corrected" the Emperor's
ignorance. "As I said, Serenity, he is simple. What he
needs-desires-those things are just as simple. First of all, he wants
the roof over his head to be sound and the food on his plate to be
abundant. He wants that food to arrive every day. He wants to be left
alone to pursue his work and the pleasures of his bed, home, and table.
If you give him these things, he is not inclined to argue overmuch about
the means required to deliver them. If he is deprived of them, he is
likely to welcome whatever measures are taken to restore them." He
raised a single finger to emphasize his next point. "Most, if not all,
of your common citizens have been so deprived, and see only a steady
decline in the quality of their lives, but if measures could be taken
that will restore many of their comforts, those things they consider so
important to their lives  ... .

"I see your point," the Emperor replied, with no more mockery in his
voice. He sat in silence, only the movement of his eyes betraying his
alertness. He could have been a grotesque statue, if not for those
glittering eyes. The Emperor did not fidget, did not visibly shift his
weight in his chair, or perform any of the other tiny, unconscious
movements of lesser beings. Partly it was a matter of training, for such
utter stillness enhanced his image of supernatural power; partly, or so
Melles suspected, it was simple good sense, to conserve his waning
energy and resources.

Finally, the Emperor spoke, his voice low, deep, and grating.

"You want me to give you the authority to order whatsoever you think is
necessary to restore order at the level of the streets.

Melles nodded, very slowly, as those powerful eyes, blazing with the
deadly life of a finely-honed blade, pinned him to his seat. He could
not, dared not, return that glare. He was not here to challenge the
Emperor, he was here to get the old man to share out some of his power.
But he also wouldn't get anywhere if he didn't admit what he wanted. It
was an interesting observation by one of his tutors that there were only
three classes of people who could afford to speak the unvarnished
truth-the very bottom, the very topmost, and children. The lowest
classes could afford it because they had nothing to lose, the highest
because there was no one who could call them to account for it, and
children because they held no power and hence were no threat. Melles had
never forgotten that observation, nor did he forget the implications of
it. The Emperor could speak pure truth; Melles could not. When the
Emperor asked a direct question, Melles had better be careful how much
of the truth he told.

But there was another factor here. At the best of times, when the
Emperor had been in his prime, he hadn't had time enough for everything.
No great ruler did; that was why they had underlings and delegated their
authority to those they thought could be trusted with it. Now, the
Emperor was old, his powers waning, and he had the very personal and
pressing matter of preserving what was left of his life to concentrate
on.

The real question, the one Melles had no answer to as yet, was just how
close to the end the Emperor was. That would tell him how reluctant
Charliss would be to give up power to his Heir. Would he clutch his
powers and possessions to him, or release them to clutch at life itself?

Those sharp, chill eyes measured him, and missed nothing in the process.
"Very well." The voice was as cold as the eyes.

"Have the orders written, and I will sign and seal them, granting you
authority over city guards, militias, and authorizing you to make use of
the Army in quelling local disturbances.

That will be enough to see if you have the insight into the common man
that you claim." A thin, humorless smile stretched the Emperor's lips.
"If you succeed, I shall consider granting you more." He waved a hand at
the Emperor, in mute disavowal of wanting any other powers. "That will
be sufficient, my Lord Emperor, I assure you. I wish only to restore
order; without order, these seeds of chaos will spread to engulf us
all." Charliss only made a wheezing grunt full of cynical amusement." I
doubt that you intend to limit your grasp. But this is all you will get
for the present. Go to the clerks and draw up the orders." That was
clear dismissal, and he took it as such. He stood, bowed with careful
exactitude, and walked backward until he reached the door. The Emperor's
eyes were on Melles every step of the way, and the slight smile on the
Emperor's lips would have chilled the blood of a lesser man.

He reached behind him and opened the door without looking at it, backed
through it, and closed it without taking his eyes off the Emperor. As
the door closed, the Imperial eyes were still fixed on him, still
measuring, still watching him for

a hint of insubordination.

As the door shut with a decisive click, Melles let out his breath,
slowly. That went better than I had any reason to hope. He's still sane;
if he stays that way, I can handle him.

He turned and stalked silently down the cold gray marble hallway with
its high ceilings and austere decorations of captured weaponry from ages
and wars long past. Like the room he had just left, the hallway was
chilly enough to make him wish he had worn heavier clothing. Ostensibly,
it was due to a failure in the enchantments of heating, but in fact it
was deliberate, to discourage loitering. The hallway was meant to
impress one who walked it with his own insignificance, and its acoustics
underscored the message well.

Here, so near to the highest seats of Imperial government, the Audience
Chamber, the Council Chamber, and the great Court Hall, one necessary
adjunct to so much power was a highly-trained cadre of Imperial clerks
to make decisions into orders. Nothing could function without written
orders. Articles, commands, and doctrine, no matter how seemingly small,
had no official life until they were quantified as documents.

These pieces of paper were so vital to the working of the Empire, they
were like water, food, or air to a soldier, and an official document
would carry more power in its words than any courtier posturing and
spouting similar verbiage.

And of course, there was such a group of vital clerks, a small army of
them, ensconced in the one comfortable chamber on this floor, between
the Court Hall and the Council Chamber.

An efficient Empire was one dependent on (though not run by) clerks,
though they might not know it; their masters did, and always had, and
took care to ensure the comfort of these all-important workers in the
hive of Imperial rule. Large windows, screened against insects, let in
cooling breezes during the heat of summer. And although the
heating-spells had failed elsewhere in Crag Castle-legitimately-measures
had always been in place in case of such a failure in the Clerks'
Chamber. There were three great fireplaces on the wall shared with the
Council Chamber, and two more on the one shared by the Court Hall, all
of them burning merrily. Charcoal footwarmers sat under desks, and those
all-important fingers kept warm and supple with metal handwarmers on
each desk.

Each clerk had his own oil lamp to read and write by, and there were
pages assigned to this room only, to bring food and drink whenever
called for.

Some-always among the "new" nobility who were not yet acquainted with
the way things worked-grumbled at this treatment of "mere" clerks. What
they were not aware of was that these clerks weren't "mere" anything,
and most of them were higher in rank than the grumblers. Here the
offspring of the noblest families in the Empire paid their service, even
those intended eventually for the Army. They were accustomed to
preferential and comfortable treatment, but that did not mean they did
not earn it by their labors. There was never an hour when there were not
at least six clerks on duty here, and there were twenty between dawn and
dusk. Only the most skilled and most discreet served here, and their
ability to remain closemouthed about what passed over their desks was
legendary.

To open the heavily-guarded door and enter this haven of heat and light
was a decided relief; Melles felt tight muscles relaxing under the
influence of the gentle warmth. It was still early enough in the day
that all twenty clerks were in attendance; Melles scanned the rows of
desks, and went straight to the first unoccupied clerk he saw.

The young man he chose sat, like all the rest, at a large wooden desk
with everything he required arranged neatly on top of it. A stack of
rough draft paper, a smaller stack of Imperial Vellum, inkpots
containing red and black ink, blotting paper, blotting sand, glass pens,
and his handwarmer were all arranged in a pattern he found personally
the most efficient.

Off to one side was the book he had been reading, which he had
immediately laid aside when Melles neared him. The only sign of
individuality was a small egg-shaped carving of white jade in a motif of
entwining fish.

The clerk himself was nondescript, unmemorable, as all of them were.
They were taught how to be forgettable and self-effacing before they came
to this duty. Here, they were a pair of hands and a brain full of
specific skills, interchangeable with every other clerk in the room.
Melles alone among his acquaintances had never taken a turn in this
room, but that was because he had been serving Empire and Emperor by
learning another set of skills entirely.

Mile the clerk made rapid notes, he dictated the orders; the clerk first
made a rough copy, checking it word for word with him, then from the
corrected rough, made a final copy on Imperial Vellum incorporating all
the changes. Melles was being very careful in how he phrased these
orders, giving himself precisely the amount of authority that the
Emperor had specified and no more. Three more clerks were summoned to
make copies at this point, for a total of five copies in all.

As yet, obviously, the orders were nothing more than paper.

When he had finished, the clerk summoned a page from the group waiting
and chattering on a bench beside the fire and sent him to the Emperor
with the finished documents. The page would not walk down the corridor
that Melles had just left; he would use a special passage between this
room and the Emperor's chambers reserved only for the pages, so that he
could not be stopped and questioned or detained.

Melles did not go with him; he was prohibited from doing so, nor would
the Emperor's guards permit him to approach with documents to be signed
in hand. This was to prevent him from somehow coercing the Emperor into
signing and sealing them, or being tricked into doing so before he had
read them.

All these convoluted customs had their reasons.

At length, the page returned, and the glitter of the Imperial Seal on
the uppermost document told Melles that all had gone well; the orders
were approved with no changes. Had there been changes, the page would
have returned with one copy, not five, which would have had the
Emperor's revisions written on it. The rest, one of the Emperor's guards
would have burned on the spot, so that the Seal could not have been
counterfeited on them.

Melles accepted his copies with a bow of thanks, and left the room. The
chill of the hallway struck him with a shock, despite being prepared for
it, but he didn't hesitate for even a moment. Now his first priority was
to get one copy of the orders into the hands of the Commander of the
Imperial Army. The cooperation of the Army was needed before he
attempted any of his ambitious plans.

He had been careful to phrase his orders in such a way that the
Commander's authority was not being subsumed by his own. The last thing
he wanted was to make an antagonist out of General Thayer. The General
made a very bad enemy, one who never forgot and never forgave. The
orders as he had dictated them gave him the authority to co-opt
regimental groups or smaller, depending on need, but only if they were
not currently deployed on some other duty. If I can't quell a riot with
less than a regiment, I won't quell it with anything larger.

"That's not a threat to Thayer, and it means I won't be countermanding
any of his standing orders to the Army as a whole.

With luck, he wouldn't need to use Imperial soldiers very often, but
luck had not been with anyone of late. He already knew that he would
have to disperse at least one riot in each City by giving the soldiers
orders to kill. It would be the first time in centuries that Imperial
soldiers had been used against civilians, and it would come as a
tremendous shock. He hoped that the shock would be great enough that he
would not need to repeat the lesson. The loss of civilians meant loss of
taxpaying workers, and at this point the Empire could not afford to lose
much in the way of taxes.

The Imperial Commander had quarters here in Crag Castle, as every
Emperor since the Third had preferred to have the Commander of his
Armies where he could keep a watchful eye on him. The Third Emperor had
originally been the Imperial Commander, and he had not approved of the
Second Emperor' s choice of Heir. He had taken matters into his own
hands the moment that the Second Emperor was dead, and had decided not
to give his own Imperial Commander the kind of opportunity that he had
taken advantage of. The rest had followed his wise example.

As Melles moved down various corridors and staircases, he passed through
narrow zones of warm air alternating with much more extensive zones of
chill to positively frigid air.

Since the denizens of Crag Castle were now relying on fireplaces and
other primitive providers of warmth, heating was unreliable and often
unpredictable. There would be illness in the Castle before the year
turned to spring; illnesses of the kind more often associated with
poorer folk.

The times are  ...  interesting. And likely to become more so before the
end.

The corridors themselves never varied in decor, only in size and height;
they continued to be built of the same gray marble, and continued to
feature only captured weaponry as decoration Once Melles left the area
of the Emperor's Quarters and the official chambers of government, the
hallways he traversed became much narrower, and the ceilings dropped to
a normal level, but that was the only way to tell that he was not within
the quarters of the Emperor himself.

The Imperial Commander was one of the highest-ranking officials in the
Council, so his chambers were correspondingly nearer to the Imperial
Chambers. Only those of the Heir-which Melles' servants were currently
engaged in arranging to suit him-were nearer. The Commander's personal
bodyguards stood at attention to either side of the door, showing that
the, great man himself was inside, as Melles had expected.

Melles would shortly have a pair of those guards outside of his own
chambers, now that he was the designated Heir. They were not just to
protect the life of those they were assigned to, they were meant as
protection for the Emperor. The Imperial Guards were an elite group,
trained and spell-bound to the service of the Emperor. No force on earth
could turn them against Charliss, and if either the Heir or the Imperial
Commander proved troublesome, well  ...  only the details of burial
would prove troublesome once their guards were finished with them. It
was possible to break the spells sealing them to the Emperor, and it was
possible that the Storms themselves had already done so. The only way to
be sure would be to approach them on the question of eliminating the
Emperor, and if the spells were intact, that could be a fatal mistake.

Tremane had managed to leave his pair of Imperial Guards behind him when
he went off to command the conquest of Hardorn, probably because the
Emperor had not expected trouble from him away from Crag Castle.
Perhaps, if Charliss had insisted that Tremane take along his watchdogs,
things might have turned out differently.

Or perhaps not, except that the Guards would have solved our problem by
dispatching Tremane for us, and I would still be Heir. There would still
be mage-storms to contend with, the Empire would still be falling to
pieces, and all else would be following much the same paths. The only
change would be that they would have one less danger to worry
about-Melles knew, as no one else in the Court did, that it was by no
means certain that Tremane had allied himself with Valdemar. In point of
fact, he hoped fervently that this was not the case. these mage-storms
were bad enough, random and untargeted as they seemed to be; if the
mages of Valdemar had at their disposal an expert, one who knew
everything there was of any importance about the Empire, what would
happen then? What if the Storms could be targeted accurately, to cause
the most disruption and damage? If Tremane really were to ally himself
"with Valdemar, that might be what they would have to deal with.

As for what such a revelation would do to the Emperor-When he was fit
and not beset by so many problems, he would simply have been angry,
gotten over it, and would dismiss his anger until someone brought him
Tremane's head.

Now, I cannot be sure, because it is possible that he, like the
'Empire, is disintegrating, and his sanity will crumble along with his
physical body.

He nodded to the two guards, who saluted and stepped aside for him as he
displayed the Imperial Seal on the documents he carried. He knocked once
on the door, then opened it and stepped inside.

He entered an anteroom, lushly carpeted, with battle-banners on all of
the walls, but holding only a monumental desk, three comfortable chairs,
and a single servant dressed in a compromise between military uniform
and private livery~ who was obviously one of Thayer's secretaries.

"I have Imperial orders for the Commander," he told the bland individual
behind the desk. "And if the Commander has time for me, I should like to
discuss them with him." Conciliate, be polite and humble. It costs
nothing, and keeps the peace.

The secretary immediately rose to his feet, and held out his hand for
the orders. "I will deliver the orders to him directly, High Lord Heir,"
he said smoothly. "Please take a seat. I believe I can assure you that
the Commander will always have time to discuss matters of the Empire
with you, for he left standing orders with me to admit you to his
presence regardless of other circumstances." As Melles suppressed his
surprise, the secretary took the paper from his hand and exited quickly
through the doorway behind his desk. Melles took a seat, examining the
fingernails of his right hand minutely as a cover for his thoughts. He
had been aware since he became a member of the Council that Thayer was
an astute politician, but he had not known how astute. Most of the other
advisers were still scrambling to decide how to handle Melles now that
he was officially the Heir.

That Thayer had left standing orders with his underlings to admit Melles
at any and all times was an interesting development, and Melles wondered
if it meant that the Commander was prepared to cooperate with the new
Heir on all levels. If so, that would make Melles' tasks incalculably
easier.

To have the Commander of the Imperial Army in my pocket  ...  half the
power of the Empire will be divided between us. And the rest, well, that
can wait.

The secretary returned before Melles needed to find some other object to
examine. "Please follow me, Great Lord," the young man said as he bowed
deeply. "The Lord Commander is eager to speak with you without delay."
Melles rose to his feet and followed the secretary into the next room of
the suite, this one very similar to the antechamber.

The Commander had excellent taste; he had carpeted over most of the
floor with one of the rich, plush rugs of the Biijal tribes of the
Eastern Islands, some of the more attractive captured battle-banners
hung on the walls, and there was a good fire going in the fireplace.
Like the antechamber, this room held little in the way of furniture,
just another monumental desk, several comfortable chairs, and two
smaller tables. Oil lamps served for illumination in place of the
mage-lights that would ordinarily have been here; with darkness falling,
these had been lit and burned brightly.

General Thayer was waiting, the Imperial Orders in his hand, standing
beside his desk rather than sitting behind it. In the silent protocols
of the Empire, he was receiving Melles as an equal rather than Melles
arriving as a supplicant. This was another good sign; Thayer was not
going to challenge his authority at all.

The General could have taken his place in the ranks of his own forces;
though his hair was as gray as granite, his body was as hard and tough
as that stone. The very few fools who had challenged Thayer to single
combat over one pretext or another had not survived the experience.
Enemies and friends alike compared him to a wolf-enemies compared him to
a ravening, insatiable hunter, friends to the powerful pack leader. Gray
as a wolf he was, and his teeth and wits were just as keen.

That sharply-chiseled face wore a friendly, welcoming expression today,
however, and although Melles knew the General to be an astute
politician, he also knew that Thayer was no good at all at hiding his
feelings. As surely as his mind was a great asset, his face was a great
handicap in the game of politics. To counter that handicap, Thayer made
every attempt to play the game in writing and appeared in person only
when policy permitted truth.

The General extended his free hand toward Melles with a smile as the
secretary bowed himself out, and Melles took his hand with an answering
smile.

"By the Hundred Little Gods, I was hoping you'd come to me first before
any of the rest!" Thayer grated. A hilt-thrust to his throat as a young
man had left him with a permanently marred voice. "Congratulations,
Melles. The Emperor finally made a good choice. Tremane was a little too
popular with his own men to make me entirely easy in my mind about him."

"Whereas I am so equally unpopular with everyone that you find me more
acceptable as Heir?" Melles raised one eyebrow delicately, and Thayer
barked a laugh.

"Let's just say that when the Commander discovers that one of his
generals is popular, it makes him wonder why that general is cultivating
popularity." Thayer bared his teeth in a smile as Melles nodded his
understanding. "Sometimes it happens that popularity is an accident, but
more often than not it's been deliberately sought. You, however-"

"I, who am known as Charliss' Executioner' need not trouble himself
about such trifles as popularity." Melles softened the comment with a
wry smile. "I would rather have respect than popularity." Thayer
answered that sally with a lifted brow of his own.

"In that, as in other things, we are like-minded. The Emperor, may he
reign long, is not the only one who needs to worry about underlings with
ambition, and I am glad enough to see Tremane eliminated. So, about
these orders-your idea?" Melles nodded, carefully gauging Thayer's
reactions before saying anything. He need not have been concerned; it
was clear that Thayer could not have been more pleased had he dictated
the orders himself.

"Damned good idea! Come sit down so we can talk about this in detail."
The General waved him to one of the chairs beside the fireplace, and
took another, tossing the orders onto the desktop but making no move to
place himself behind the desk. Melles took his seat, and the General
moved his own chair nearer to that of the Heir before sitting in it.
"Damned good idea!" he repeated. "Declare martial law, and you'll have
the cits up in arms and starting a revolt in the streets, but bring in
the Army without actually calling it martial law, and they'll fall in
line without a whimper if you can restore order." He coughed. "Give them
back their easy lives, and they'll call you a god and not care how you
managed it."

"My idea is to use the smallest number of soldiers that I can to crush
disturbances absolutely," Melles said cautiously.

"I don't want people to begin muttering that we've called out the Army
on them; I believe that is one thing the citizens of the Empire won't
tolerate. If you'll look at those orders, you'll see I've been given
direct command of city guards, constables, and militia. The way I see
it, if I use those forces in the front ranks, and only use the Army
regulars to back them up and add strength to their line, I'll get the
effect that I want without it looking as if the Army is taking over."

"Good. Sound strategy," Thayer confirmed. "Out in the provinces they
expect the Army to put down trouble, but the cits think they're above
all that. Put down the first riots efficiently, kill a few of the worst
troublemakers, and I don't think you'll have any trouble reestablishing
order. I was hoping someone would figure out that we're in for a spot of
domestic trouble and would plan on dealing with it." And of course he
didn't dare suggest it himself. Charliss would see that as a direct
threat to his own authority, and I would have been asked to find General
Thayer a-retirement.

Thayer knows it, too. He nodded, and leaned back in his chair, feeling
much more confident with Thayer as an open ally. "It's not common
knowledge, but there have already been small disturbances, and I expect
larger ones as food runs short and hardships build up," he said easily.
"If we're ready-and ruthless in suppressing the troubles to come-I think
the citizens will accept what we do as a necessary evil."

"Yes, as we've said, find a way to get them their meals and peace and
the cits will accept anything short of burning down the city," Thayer
retorted with contempt. "Now, how exactly do you want me to help? You
want a special regiment detached to go wherever it's needed, or-" Thayer
paused, looking eager, but a bit reluctant to put forth his own ideas.
"Well, I'm a military man, I don't have any experience in riot control,
but" You have an idea of your own," Melles said, leaning forward with
interest. "Please. I'd like to hear it."

"We've still got limited communication mage-to-mage with all the
military bases, and you know there's at least one near every large
city," Thayer told him. "Now, if I were to move a certain number of men,
a company, say, into each city-if you were to get the militias and city
guards and so on organized in the way you want beforehand-well, as soon
as a riot started, your city militia would naturally go take care of it,
and just as naturally the captain of the company would offer his help.
Your militia captain would accept it, and why not, they're both in
military brotherhoods, as it were. With the backing of the Army, I don't
see any reason why we couldn't squash any riot. And technically, since I
doubt every hothead in every city would take it into his head to riot on
the same day, you wouldn't be exceeding the number of men you asked
for." He grinned slyly. "You see, they'd only be under your command for
the duration of the riot; after that, they'd come back under my
authority." Melles allowed himself a dry chuckle. General Thayer was
obviously a past master at the fine art of manipulating loopholes, and
his strategy was an application of the very orders that he had written
that he himself had not considered.

But then, I didn't have any reason to suspect that Thayer would make
quite such an eager ally.

"That, General, is a brilliant plan; quite perfect for all our
purposes," he replied, allowing approval to creep into his voice. The
General smiled, a smile with just as much steel in it as warmth.

"Good. We're agreed on it, then." Thayer nodded decisively.

"Now, in return, I'd appreciate it if you could do something about some
domestic orders for me-not exactly requisitions, more like assignments.
It all still comes under the heading of restoring domestic order."

"I'll do what I can." Melles had expected this; trading favor for favor
was the accepted way of doing business in Imperial politics. He wouldn't
commit himself until he'd heard precisely what Thayer had in mind, but
Thayer knew that al ready.

"Put the Army in charge of all intercity transportation of supplies."
Thayer looked him straight in the eyes. "As it is, stuff's being moved
inefficiently, what gets moved is random, and carters are getting fat no
matter what. The Army's suffering, because we're having to pay through
the nose, just like the cits are. Conscript the carters, take over the
Cartage Guild, make 'em subject to Army discipline, and we'll cure
what's causing some of your riots in short order. Every dog in the
Empire knows what's going on, and they'll be happy to see the Cartage
Guild get what's coming to them. The cits are as tired of the
profiteering as I am." And you and your officers will get fat on the
profits, instead of the Cartage Guild. Melles saw right through that
one, but Thayer was right about several things. Transportation was a
hit-or-miss matter right now, and the profits that the carters were
making were obscene. Putting the Army in charge would reduce
profiteering to an acceptable level, and get transportation organized.
And there had been unrest over the profiteering; at least one of the
riots had destroyed a Cartage Guildhall and the buildings near it.

No, there will be no weeping if I conscript the carters, their beasts,
and their vehicles.

The question was, could he get away with that assignment, as an
interpretation of the orders that Charliss had just signed?

He unrolled one of his own copies and scanned it quickly, then looked up
into Thayer's flat brown eyes. "I think this particular set of commands
gives me that authority," he said, knowing that the Emperor wouldn't
care so long as he could keep anyone from lodging complaints against it.
And since Thayer was going to have pressing reasons to prevent
complaints When I send out copies of the original orders, I'll see to it
that this particular amendment is added." Thayer smiled with
satisfaction. "I'll have my mages get to r .

Mercedes Lackey work," he promised. "By tomorrow night, there'll be
companies picked; by the next day I'll have them moving into barracks in
the cities. Don't worry; I'll send orders to select steady men,
veterans, men who won't panic, won't shoot unless they're ordered, and
won't exceed their orders. I'll send captains who have every reason to
keep peace, steady men, not sadists who enjoy breaking heads." Army
efficiency, he thought enviously. It's a beautiful thing to see working.
"My orders will have to travel by signal and sometimes courier, but
they'll get to most of the Empire in a fortnight," he replied, and stood
up. "It will be a pleasure working with you, Lord Commander," he
finished, holding out his hand as the General stood up.

Thayer took it in another firm handclasp. "An equal pleasure here, he
said. "And a damned sight better than working with one of the infernal
groat-counters, let me tell you!" He followed at Melles' elbow, quite
pleased to accompany his visitor to the door.

Melles knew what he meant; several of the possible candidates for Heir
were men less of vision than of caution. Few of ",.Them would have the
imagination to foresee the riots he knew were bound to come, much less
to plan how to quell them.

"Just remember-we want our actions to be as unobtrusive as possible-so
that the citizens welcome the sight of soldiers in the streets rather
than fearing it." Thayer opened the door to the antechamber for him,
nodding vigorously. "Exactly. I'll draw up a set of riot orders for you;
you look them over and tell me what you want changed." He waved Melles
through. "Grevas, see the Lord Heir out, would you? Lord Melles, I can't
thank you enough for coming here yourself."

"Think nothing of it; I am glad that we could reach an understanding so
quickly." Melles passed into the antechamber where the secretary
received him with a deep bow of respect, then hurried to open the door
for him. He waved his thanks at the underling, and entered the cold
hallway feeling as if he had done a good day's work indeed.

Now, what else? Orders to requisition food if it's necessary, and it
will be. And orders to requisition extra beasts and vehicles from the
Estates, placing them in the hands of the Army. Have to specify rules
about requisitions; taking a STORM BREAKING III farmer's only cart and
horse is only going to be counterproductive.

Put one of my secretaries on it. Mertun-he was a farmer's son. That
would be enough for now; too many orders all at once, and it would cause
more unease and unrest than already existed.

And I need to consolidate my personal position. That, fortunately, was
mostly a matter of reinforcing his own standing orders to his special
operatives. Those operatives would act as needed, and bring him the
information he required. And insofar as power in the Council of Advisers
and the Court went-well, most mouths would smile and utter compliments,
and he would accept them. Action would speak the real truths, and his
operatives would ferret out what those same mouths said in private.

There was a single exception to all of that. If the Army could manage to
keep their lines of communication open, it meant that they were able to
get some magics to work. Probably those of short duration; and that may
be the secret. That, and a great deal of power forcing the magics
through. I have power, and I have more than one mage in my own pay. I
simply hadn't thought to apply great power to small goals, but maybe
those goals are not so small after all, now.

He hurried down the corridor to his new quarters, only a short distance
from the General's, and found his own Imperial bodyguards waiting at the
door for him. They opened the door for him with great ceremony, and he
was greeted on the other side by his own servants, who surrounded him
and began fussing over him immediately with great ceremony and a little
fear.

Impatiently, he waved most of them away. His new quarters were
fundamentally identical to his old, except that the rooms were a bit
larger, the furnishings (those that were not his personal gear) more
luxurious, and the suite itself was situated better with regard to
conveniences. In the time he'd spent conferring with the Emperor and
General Thayer, his servants had removed all signs of the former
occupant, and had made it seem as if he had always lived here. His own
carpets were on the floor, his tapestries and maps on the walls, his
books in the cases and on the tables. He went straight to his desk to
draft the orders-or rather, elaborations-that were to be appended to the
Imperial Orders he had with him.

And in the kind of war he waged, the best and most reliable weapon was
knowledge.

It was time to wield that particular weapon, and with more finesse and
care than he had ever exercised before.

When he had finished, he handed the rough drafts to his own secretary~
along with the four copies of the Imperial Orders he still retained.

"Take care of these-and have Mertun specify under what conditions a
man's beast and vehicle are to be exempt from requisition," he ordered.
His secretary bowed and took the papers out. Only then did he permit
himself to relax, putting himself into the care of his valet. His
secretary would see that three sets of the Orders got into the hands of
the Imperial Clerks for distribution and dissemination. One set would
remain here, for use as a reference.

He walked into his private chambers at the direction of his valet; with
his own furniture here, in the same positions as in his old rooms, he
could almost convince himself that nothing had changed.

Almost. It's begun. I have started the avalanche; there will be no
stopping it now. He allowed his valet to extract him from his stiff coat
of hean embroidered satin and help him into a much more comfortable
robe. Within a short period of time he was settled in a chair beside a
fireplace, with food and drink and a book on the table at his right
hand.

He stared into the flames, amused and bemused by everything that had
happened today. It had certainly been an eventful day, and one he would
remember for a long time.

Nevertheless, his day was not yet over. He rang for his valet, and when
the man appeared, murmured a certain phrase that meant his operatives
were to be contacted and called in, one at a time. My agents will have
to watch for some new things now, as well as the old. My mages-well, if
the Army can accomplish communicative magics, perhaps there are a few
things that we can accomplish, too.

It occurred to him that although vengeance on his old enemy Tremane was
probably out of the question, at least he ought to be sure just exactly
what Tremane was up to. Scrying was another magic of limited scope and
duration, and it was just possible that enough could be learned by means
of scrying to warn him if Tremane was actually a danger to the Empire.

He settled back, sipped hot spiced wine thoughtfully, and waited for the
first of his spies to appear. No, much as he A' would like to, he could
not dispose of that annoying Tremane but he could not ignore the man
either.

Lo'isha., Kal'enedril, and Silverfox out The cavernous interior of
Urtho's Tower was remarkably quiet with the gryphons gone. An'desha
hadn't quite realized until now how much sound the gryphons
produced-like the constant click of talons on stone, the windlike
bellows-sound of their breathing and the rustle of feathers. He'd gotten
used to those whispers of sound, and without them, his own voice seemed
unnaturally loud despite the susurration of other activity.

Look here, it's really quite logical," An'desha said, with one finger
under the line of characters-the same words, written in three different
languages. Karal peered at them, his forehead creasing with
concentration. "This is the Hawkbrother, this is the Shin'a'in, and you
can see how similar-" A muffled thud interrupted him, followed by the
sound of alarmed and complaining voices. Startled, he looked up, past
Karal and into the central room of the Tower.

He knew those voices, although he had not expected to hear them today.
He got up and moved to the doorway, just to see if he was somehow
mistaken.

He wasn't. The aged Imperial mage Sejanes, in his robes of oddly
military cut, was a strange contrast to Master Artificer Levy in his
practical, yet luxurious, black silk and leather.

Both of them, however, looked pale and ill and much the worse for their
travel. Walking ahead of them was Altra.

"By the Hundred Little Gods!" said Sejanes, every hair on his gray head
standing straight out. "If I never have to travel this way again, it
will be too soon!" Master Levy swallowed, looking to An'desha as if he
were fighting to keep his stomach from revolting. Ms .face had a
greenish tint, and the knuckles of his clenched fists were White. "I ...
quite agree with you, Sejanes," he said in a strangled voice. "I believe
that, given the option, I will walk home." Altra looked at both of them
with unconcealed contempt, stalking off into Karal's side room to
bonelessly flop down onto the foot of Karal's pallet. An'desha followed
him. An'desha didn't "hear" the Firecat say anything, but Karal pulled
his mostly-untouched bowl of stew over to the cat, who gratefully
inhaled it as if he hadn't eaten in weeks.

Meanwhile, Firesong, Lo'isha, Silverfox, and two of the Shin'a'in
hurried over to greet the aged mage and younger Master Artificer. There
wasn't much in the way of furniture here, but Silverfox brought both of
them folding stools to sit on, and they sagged down onto that support
with evident gratitude.

An'desha didn't blame either of the newcomers for their reactions; he
knew from personal experience that they were not exaggerating their
exhaustion and illness.

An'desha had traveled once in the care of Altra the Firecat, in the
creature's bizarre distance-devouring method of transportation called
"Jumping," and he would not particularly care to experience it again.
The Firecats were somehow able to cross great distances in the blink of
an eye, and could take with them whatever or whoever was touching them.
The experience was a gut-wrenching one, similar to a Gate-crossing, but
repeated over and over with each jump. The closer together the jumps
were, the worse the effect was. The amount of cumulative effect varied
with each person, but from the look of these two, Altra hadn't paused
much between jumps and this latest journey had been quite a rough ride
for them.

An'desha watched for a moment, but Firesong, Silverfox, and the rest
seemed to have the situation well in hand.

Sejanes clearly needed to go lie down, and Master Levy to sit down and
have something to settle his stomach. After a brief rest, both of them
were taken into the vacant side chamber that had earlier served as the
gryphons' nest. Karal, meanwhile, was fussing over Altra, who, for the
first time in An'desha' s experience, was looking rather shopworn.
Evidently the trip hadn't been easy on him either.

He remembered what Altra had said about the fact that even jumping had
become much more difficult. "Are you feeling all right?" he asked the
cat, as Karal hovered over him anxiously.

I have felt better," the Firecat replied dryly. "But I believe that with
a short rest and food, I shall be fine. The currents in the
energy-fields are vicious. It has become very dangerous to lump even a
tenth of my usual distances. I do think that from here on in I, too,
would prefer to walk where I need to go, given the choice." The clacking
of hooves on the floor signaled the arrival of the Companion Florian.
:oh, don't be ridiculous, Altra," the Companion said mockingly. "Of
course you won't have to walk& You'll convince one of us to carry you."
Altra ignored him, pretending to concentrate on the vital task of
licking the bowl clean. That didn't take too long, and as soon as the
last hint of gravy was gone, he curled up in such a way that he wouldn't
be in the way of Karal's feet if the young Karsite needed to rest. "I'm
going to sleep now," the Firecat said with great dignity, and he closed
his eyes firmly, still ignoring Florian's jibe.

Florian made a whickering sound that was so like a chuckle that there
was no doubt in An'desha's mind what the Companion was thinking. "oh,
leave him alone, Florian," he told the Companion. "At least for now. You
can't deny that he has done more than his share for some time to come.
If Gating is dangerous, how could jumping be less than hazardous?" True
enough," Florian replied equitably. "You are correct, An'desha, and I am
at fault here. Altra has served heroically, and I should not have teased
him, especially not when he is as exhausted as his passengers. I beg
your pardon, cat." And I grant it, horse," came from the
seemingly-sleeping Firecat.

Florian stepped over and touched his nose to the Firecat's fur in a
conciliatory gesture, then backed off to the chamber entrance. He stood
with one eye cast toward the main chamber, and the other watching over
Altra and his friends, before finally quietly clopping off.

"Well. We have everyone we need," An'desha said to Karal,

"Except perhaps that Kaled'a'in scholar we have been promised.

We can certainly resume investigating the other devices we found."

"I keep thinking that there are more rooms and chambers we haven't found
yet," Karal replied, lying back down on his pallet, taking care to not
to disturb Altra.

"There probably are," An'desha told him. "We've found signs of at least
four more places where there might be storage chambers or even a passage
to a lower level. The problem is that we haven't been able to get them
open. Perhaps Sejanes or Master Levy will be able to help there." He
smiled at his friend. "To tell you the truth, I suspect it will be
Master Levy; I have the feeling that the tricks to getting these hatches
open are purely mechanical." Karal smiled back. "I think you may be
right. That would fit well enough with what Treyvan was able to tell me
about the Mage of Silence. It would be like him to put a mechanical
catch in a place of magic, knowing that anyone who came here intending
mischief would probably be expecting magic and not be prepared for
mechanics." An'desha chuckled. "And that would certainly put Fire song's
nose out of joint. Poor Firesong! At every turn, it seems as if his
great powers as an Adept are less and less important!" Karal nodded and
rubbed the back of his neck in thought.

"It must be awfully difficult for him to face each day. just look at
what has happened. He went from being the brightest star in the skies to
...  finding his powers unreliable and lessened, with new methods to do
what he used to do coming up every day. Some of them are even
contradictory to what he has known as fact all his life." An'desha
frowned and nodded. "Sometimes I feel like I cheated him out of his
glory by being who and what I am, but I know that none of us dictated or
could have predicted the way things would unfold. I owe him my life, by
the Star-Eyed' s grace, and I am grateful to him, but I wish that he
could feel the happiness now that he used to enjoy in the Vales. And as
for things being contradictory-you've been experiencing much of that
yourself, spiritually. So have we all, I think." He paused, fingers
tented as he carefully considered his next words. "Still-Master Levy
says that all things in our world, no matter how illogical they may
seem, are still consistent under unseen laws. The spirits I have spoken
with on the Moonpaths have implied much the same-that magic in all its
forms works under those laws as surely as rain, wind, and beasts do.
Perhaps Firesong& and all of us, are learning new aspects of the laws we
have been subject to all our lives."

"With Master Levy here to confound us all with his teachings on
universal laws, you'll need me for a secretary again," Karal said as he
smoothed down his warm robes, brightening considerably. "I'll be glad to
be useful again." An'desha nodded with sympathy; he knew how idleness,
even enforced, had fretted his friend, and he would also be glad to see
Karal feeling as if he were contributing his share.

Realistically, Karal was not able to help at all with brute-force
physical tasks, but the role of secretary was perfect for him.

He would have said something, but he noticed that Karal seemed very
tired, and it occurred to him that the two of them had been working
quite steadily on comparing Shin'a'in, Tayledras, and Kaled'a'in writing
ever since breakfast. Mental work could be just as exhausting as
physical labor, even for those, like Karal, who had a knack for it.

"Why don't you look after Altra for a while," he said, cleverly using
the Firecat as an excuse to get Karal to rest. "I'll go see if our hosts
want to know anything about Sejanes and Master Levy." Karal nodded, and
caressed Altra with one hand while he closed his eyes. An'desha
collected the empty stew bowl and made a mental note to get something
more suited to Altra's tastes from the Shin'a'in.

He left Karal beginning to doze, Altra already asleep, and Florian
watching over them both, and went out into the main chamber in the
center of the Tower. Master Levy~ already recovered, was examining the
floor of that chamber on his hands and knees. He looked up as An'desha
entered.

"Has anyone looked at the floor here?" he asked.

"We looked, but we didn't see anything," the Shin'a'in replied." Why?
Have you found something?"

"Perhaps." Master Levy got to his feet. "When I was still studying, I
used to earn spending money by designing and helping to build hidden
doors and chambers for wealthy or eccentric clients. I think there might
be something here."

"Huh." An'desha looked closely at the floor, and had to shake his head.
"I'll take your word for it. Do you think you can get it open-if there
is anything there?"

"Perhaps," Master Levy repeated. "I'll have to examine it later, when
I'm not exhausted. This is all sheer nervous energy, you see, plus a
rather stupid wish to seem in better physical shape than old Sejanes,
and it's all about to run out. I'm going to get a bowl of that stew I
smell, and then I am going to sleep for a day." An'desha laughed, as
Master Levy shrugged ruefully and with self-deprecation. As the Master
Artificer drifted in the direction of their little charcoal stove and
the bubbling stewpot atop it, he started back toward Karal. But halfway
there, he turned, a little surprised, as a soft voice hailed him.

It was one of the few black-clad Kal'enedral, and with him was another
wearing dark blue. The one in black he knew; Ter'hala, an old man whose
blood-feud would technically never be completed, because the one who
murdered his oathbrother had been Mornelithe Falconsbane. It was doubly
ironic that An'desha and Ter'hala had become friends over the past few
days. Ter'hala knew who and what he had been, of course. An'desha,
understandably nervous, had asked him why he continued to wear black;
'rerhala had laughed and said that he was used to the color and too old
to change.

"Ter'hala!" An'desha greeted him. "Who is your friend?" The Kal'enedral
sketched a salute of greeting. "This is Che'sera, young friend. He
wished to meet you." An'desha bowed slightly. "I am always honored to
meet one of the servants of the Wise One," he said politely, though he
could not for the life of him imagine what had brought so many of the
reclusive "Scrollsworn"-as he called them, to distinguish them from the
true Swordsworn--out of Kata'shin'a'in and their stronghold there. "We
are all truly grateful for the hospitality and tolerance you have shown
to US.// I wonder if the reason is that we've just added two more
meddlers to the group, and one of them is a mage from a completely
unknown land, he thought, though he kept his thoughts to himself. Not
that I blame them. We're the interlopers here; the Star-Eyed gave them
the keeping of this Tower and its secrets, not us.

Che'sera returned his bow. "I am pleased to meet you, An'desha," he
replied, his voice so carefully neutral that An'desha could not read any
second meaning into the words.

"It is not often that one of the Plains who goes to become a mage ever
returns again."

"It is not often that the shamans permit him to return," An'desha
replied, as calmly and carefully as he could, although he could in no
way match the lack of inflection in Che'sera's voice. "Until only
recently, mages have been forbidden the Plains, even those of the
People."

"Well, and you can certainly see why," Che'sera countered immediately,
gesturing at the Tower remains about them.

"This would all have been a great temptation. Can you say, had you
become a mage of the Tale'edras, that you would not have been tempted to
try to use one of these weapons against the one they called
Falconsbane?" An'desha shuddered. He still had far too many of
Falconsbane' s memories of the life he had led using An'desha's body for
comfort-and behind those memories, marched others, a seemingly endless
parade of atrocities stretching back into a dim past as ancient as this
Tower.

"I would," he admitted slowly. "I would have been tempted by anything
that might have brought the monster down. Anything that would have saved
others from the horror he wrought." Che'sera shrugged. "And yet it took
how many of you, working together, to simply use the energy of one of
these weapons rather than the weapon itself?"

"And yet you permit us here now." An'desha allowed one eyebrow to rise.

"We do, and that is in part why I wished to speak with you," Che'sera
told him. "May we speak privately, you and I, for a little while,
Shin'a'in to Shin'a'in?" Now An'desha was considerably more surprised,
and not at all certain what Che'sera had in mind. This was the first
time in his reckoning that any of the Shin'a'in here had addressed him
in such a fashion; most seemed uncomfortable with the concept of a
Shin'a'in who was also a mage, and some seemed of the personal opinion
that his half-foreign blood made him more alien than Shin'a'in.
"Certainly, if that is what you wish." He nodded toward the sleeping
chamber. "My friend Karal is asleep in there; he will not hear us, and
if we speak quietly, we will not disturb him. I fear that is the most
privacy I can offer, as it is in somewhat short supply here despite the
vastness of the place." Che'sera nodded. "That will do," he said, and
gestured to An'desha to lead him onward.

An'desha did so, walking with great care past Karal and Altra, although
neither stirred, nor in fact gave any indication that they were alive
except for their steady breathing. At the moment he was suffering from
mixed feelings; he was both curious and apprehensive to hear what
Che'sera wanted to say that required privacy.

He gestured at his own pallet, waiting until Che'sera took a seat at the
foot before seating himself.

So, he said, wondering what he was letting himself in for.

"What is it you wish of me, Sworn One?"

When Che'sera left him at last, he sat back against the gently-curving
stone wall and simply thought of nothing for a while. He felt as if
Che'sera had taken his mind, had turned it upside-down and shaken it,
examined it, poked and prodded it, turned it inside out, and then, when
he was finished,. put it all neatly back in place with the ends tucked
in.

He had probably been the most skillful interrogator that An'desha or any
of Falconsbane's many incarnations had ever encountered. You know, I
suspect that at this point he could predict my reaction to virtually any
situation, and do so with more accuracy than I could!

Although his questions had covered virtually every subject, Che'sera
seemed particularly interested in the Avatars. That was the one thing
that hadn't surprised him, since virtually all of the Sworn had wanted
to know about Dawnfire and Tre'valen sooner or later. Some of them here
had actually been present when Dawnfire, trapped in the body of her
bondbird, had been transformed into an Avatar in the first place. It had
occurred to An'desha that as far as he was concerned, such a
transformation was a poor substitute for returning Dawnfire to her
proper human form. But then again, perhaps that had not been possible;
granted, the Star-Eyed had been able to undo most of the changes
Falconsbane had run on An'desha's own body, but that was in the nature
of restoring something to its rightful state, not changing it into
something else altogether.

Perhaps all that She would have been able to manage would have been
transformation into a tervardi, one of the bird-people, and that might
have been a truly cruel "reward" for her, since the tervardi are frail
and not very humanlike.

At least this way, she is still fundamentally herself and she is
anything but frail.

He also sensed that there were other complications to the story that no
one had told him about. And there was, of course, the factor that
Dawnfire had been mourned for dead, and her human body buried when the
bond to it was snapped by Falconsbane. It didn't necessarily do for
a deity to resurrect people; the question would inevitably arise: "Why
this one and not my father, mother, sibling, lover." Better, on the
whole, not to do any such thing. Look at all the effort that the
Companions went to in order to preserve the secret of their own nature,
and they weren't even returning as humans! just such philosophical
questions had arisen in the course of Che'sera's questioning-though on
his part, rather than Che'sera's-and the Sworn One had neatly deflected
them.

Perhaps it had been because Che'sera wanted him to think of possible
answers for himself; there had been that kind of feeling as the
conversation progressed.

And in all of that, I didn't learn a thing about Che'sera himself. Now
that was truly unusual, since Falconsbane had been a rather skilled
interrogator and some of that expertise was available to An'desha. Given
the proper occasion, that was one of Falconsbane's abilities that
An'desha did not mind co-opting, but he had not been able to insert so
much as a single personal question of his own the entire time the two of
them spoke. Che'sera was most unusual, even for the Sworn.

An'desha rubbed his temples, feeling as if he should have a headache
after all that Che'sera had put him through, even though he did not.

Activity, that was what was called for. There were dishes to wash, there
was clothing to mend, and there were all manner of things to be done. Or
perhaps he ought to go look at the food supplies the Shin'a'in had
brought, and see if there was something more that could be done with
them than the seemingly endless round of soups and stews they had been
presented with thus far. He wasn't precisely a grand cook, but he did
have experience in dishes that no one else here did.

He rose and went in search of something useful to do.

The clothing and kitchen work had already been taken care of. but as it
turned out, there was something new he could concoct in the way of
dinner for them all. There was fresh meat, brought in by Shin'a'in
hunters; there were beans and a few other winter vegetables such as
onions, and there were spices and dried peppers. That particular
combination reminded him of a recipe Karal had made up for him once,
when they'd been too late to catch dinner with either the Court or the
Heraldic students. He diced some of the meat and hot peppers and browned
them together, added onions, beans and sweet spice, and set it all to
cook slowly. While all of those ingredients had been used before, no one
in the group had ever used them in that combination. It would definitely
be different from anything the Shin'a'in had been cooking, and that was
what he was looking for.

It had taken a long time to dice the meat as finely as the recipe called
for, and having his hands busy allowed his mind to rest. His mind wasn't
the only thing resting, however, and although Karal was still sleeping,
others were awake again. At about the time he finished with his
concoction, Master Levy was out in the main room on his hands and knees,
looking intently at the floor, and prying at invisible cracks with some
very tiny tools he took from a pouch at his belt.

An'desha washed up the utensils he'd used for his preparations, dried
his hands, and went out to join him, though no one else seemed at all
interested in what he was doing. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
he asked, sitting on his heels just behind the Master Artificer.

"Well, there is something here, all right," Master Levy replied in an
absent tone. "This is a movable stone, and I would guess that it drops
down and fits into a slot carved into the rock. It may take me a while
to figure out the release, though.

Tell me something, do you have any idea if this mage thought in
patterns, in numbers of things? As in-oh, the Karsites think in terms of
one, seven, or eight-if they build a device with a catch, it will either
have a single trigger-point or seven.

That's because they have a single God, but in the usual representations
of Vkandis as the sun rising, there are seven rays coming from it and in
the ones of the sun-in-glory there are eight rays. The Rethwellans
almost always use three, for the three faces of their Goddess. Most
Valdemarans use three or two, three for the same reason as the
Rethwellans, or two for the God and Goddess. It's not a conscious thing,
it's just the kind of patterns that people establish as very small
children."

"You might try four," An'desha said, after a moment of thought. "Urtho
shared the Kaled'a'in faith, if he shared anything religious with
anyone, and that's the same as the Shin'a'in. Except where it's
free-flowing and cum there's a great deal of square and diamond symmetry
in the decorations around here." Master Levy grunted what sounded like
thanks, and seemed to widen his scope of examination a bit.

Finally he sat back on his haunches, stretched all his fingers and shook
his head. "Shall we see if we're supremely lucky and we're not dealing
with a random placing?" he asked An'desha, his saturnine face showing
rather more humor than An'desha was used to seeing from him. "If your
guess is right, I think I've found all four trigger points; if mine is
right, this far inside his Tower Urtho would not have bothered to be
terribly clever about hiding his additional workrooms and the catches
won't be difficult. I don't suppose you've got a clue about an order in
which to push four trigger-points, do you?"

"If you're not supposed to push all of them at once, you mean?" An'desha
thought again. "East, South, West, and North. That's the order in
rituals, with the Maiden being in the East and the Crone in the North."

"That sounds as good a guess as any. Let's see what happens.//

Master Levy reached out with one of his tools, but An'desha shot out a
hand to stop him. "Wait a minute!" he stammered.

"If you do this wrong, is anything likely to-well~-go wrong?

Will the ceiling fall in and crush us, or poison gas start seeping in
here, or something?" Master Levy paused. "There is that possibility," he
began, and laughed at An'desha's expression. "oh, for Haven's sake, it's
not very likely he'd put something like that in the floor now, is it?
Where it might be triggered by accident just by people standing on it?"
An'desha flushed, embarrassed. "I suppose not," he replied, letting go
of Master Levy's hand.

The Master Artificer continued his interrupted task, depressing a small
spot in the stone of the floor. An'desha noted with fascination that it
remained depressed so that if one had placed a coin on the spot, it
would be flush with the rest of the floor. Master Levy then touched a
second, and a third, both of which also remained depressed after he
touched them, and although An'desha had not been able to spot the second
place, once he had the distance between the first and second, he was
able to deduce the locations of the third and fourth spot before Master
Levy touched them. An'desha held his breath in anticipation when the
Master Artificer pushed on that last place.

Nothing happened for a long moment, and An'desha sighed with
disappointment. Master Levy~ however, had his head cocked to one side,
and as An'desha sighed, he stood up, looked fixedly at a place in the
pattern of the floor shaped like an octagon, then stamped sharply down
on one corner of it with his boot heel.

With a reluctant, grating sound, the stone moved a trifle, dropping down
by about the width of a thumb.

Master Levy stamped downward again, and the stone moved a bit more.
"It's stuck. Old, you know," he quipped.

He continued urging it with carefully-placed blows of his heel as it
dropped down about the distance of a man's hand measured from the end of
the middle finger to the wrist, then began to slide sideways. Once there
was a sliver of a gap between the octagonal stone and the rest of the
floor, he got down on hands and knees again, and peered at it.

By now, thanks to the sounds of stamping and the grating of
stone-on-stone, he had attracted the attention of everyone in the Tower
who was not asleep. "Will you look at that!" Silverfox exclaimed, as the
curious gathered around. "We never guessed that was there!"

"I am looking at it. I think I'm going to need something to I pry With,"
Master Levy replied. "The mechanisms are rather stuck, which shouldn't
be too surprising considering their age.

I'm afraid once I get this open, it's not going to shut again."

"I don't see a problem with that," Firesong said, dropping down on his
heels to peer at the stone himself, beside Master Levy, while Silverfox
went off to get a pry bar from a Plainsman." If there's anything down
there worth bothering with, we wouldn't want to close it, and if there
isn't, we'll clean out the trash and use it for sleeping quarters or
something." Master Levy grunted and nodded his head as he felt along the
crack with great care, then put his nose to the crack to sniff at it
gingerly. "I don't smell anything that shouldn't be down there," he said
after a long moment while he concentrated on the scent with his eyes
closed. "And I always did have the best nose in my year-group. When the
students were experimenting, my Alchemy Master always used to count on
me to know when to evacuate the workroom if something went wrong."

"Comforting, considering there might be a mechanism to release poisons
into the room below, if not this one," said Sejanes, coming up to the
rest with his hair all rumpled from sleeping. Silverfox arrived at that
moment with the pry bar and shook his head at the Imperial mage.

"Not Urtho, and especially not in his own Tower," the kestra'chern said
decisively. "He was a compassionate and considerate man, safe and
resourceful but not vengeful. He would only create wards to protect
things, not to punish. He wouldn't have taken the risk that a curious
hertasi or some other innocent might set such a thing loose." Sejanes
looked skeptical, but didn't say anything. Silverfox, however, read the
look correctly.

"You're not dealing with the Empire, Sejanes," he said.

"You're not dealing with people looking to gain in rank by whatever
means it takes. Urtho's personal servants and close friends were loyal
enough to die for him-and many did, to his sorrow. Here in the heart of
his personal stronghold, he would not have used safeguards that could
harm his own people as well as intruders." Master Levy inserted the
tongue of the pry bar in the crack, and pulled.

The stone grated, and moved slightly, then kept on moving for a little
after Master Levy stopped pulling. Now the gap was about as wide as a
large man's palm.

"Do we want to investigate before we open this any further?" the
Artificer asked Silverfox. "I defer to your judgment, since you seem to
know more about the master of this place than anyone else here."
Silverfox looked pointedly at An'desha, who shook his head in answer to
the silent question. "My knowledge is tainted, since it comes from his
enemy," he said at once. "Ma'ar is far more likely to have underestimated
a foe he considered sentimental and soft."

"It wouldn't hurt to drop a lantern down on a string," Silverfox said to
Master Levy. "Then at least we'll be able to see what we're dealing
with. For all we know, this is just a well, and not any kind of a
storeroom or workroom."

"A source of water other than melted snow from the surface would be
welcome," Lo'isha murmured quietly. Master Levy heard him, and nodded in
answer to both statements.

This time it was An'desha's turn to go off and rummage for a lantern and
some appropriately strong string. They hadn't needed lanterns since they
arrived here, although the Shin'a'in had brought some, just in case the
magical lights failed. The magic lamps hanging from the center of the
ceiling of each room had been quite enough to serve their needs and
showed no signs of being harmed at all by the mage-storms that made
magic problematic outside the Tower. An'desha dug one of the lanterns
out of a pile of articles no one had found a use for, and got some
string from the kitchen area.

He filled the lamp with oil, trimmed the wick with thread clippers from
a sewing kit, and lit it before bringing it out to the rest.

Master Levy made the handle fast to the string and lowered the lantern
down into the cavity while the others crowded around. An'desha couldn't
see anything from his vantage, and neither could most of the Shin'a'in.

"Well?" called Che'sera. "What's there?"

"Stairs, mostly," Master Levy replied. "So this isn't a well.

I believe I see something like furniture at the bottom, but the light
doesn't go very far down."

"It's not dimming in bad air, is it?" An'desha asked anxiously, vague
memories of tomb openings intruding from one of Falconsbane's previous
lives. "Even if there are no poisons, the air could have gone bad from
what's been sealed inside."

"No, it's burning brightly enough. It's just a long way down to the next
floor and the light is between me and what's down there," Master Levy
replied. "It is an issue of contrast and visual acuity. Well, no help
for it. Back to hard labor." He inserted the tongue of the pry bar and
continued to lever the stubborn stone out of the way, while at least a
couple of the observers looked at each other, wondering why the
Artificer used such flowery terms to say he couldn't see well. Suddenly,
with no warning whatsoever, the frozen mechanism gave way. The stone
slid beneath the floor into hiding, and Master Levy, taken completely
off guard, fell over backward, the pry bar dropping out of his hands and
clanging end-over-end down the staircase.

Only An'desha remained to assist the winded Artificer to his feet; the
rest of the spectators made a rush for the stair with Firesong in the
lead. In mere moments they had descended out of sight; then Firesong
spoke a single word, light poured up from below, and muffled
exclamations were drifting up through the hole in the floor.

"You might say 'thank you!'" Master Levy called after them, and sighed,
rubbing his hip where he had landed. "We may as well go find out what
they've discovered. I only hope it isn't Urtho's treasury; there isn't a
great deal of good that gold and gems would do us in this situation."

"Urtho's treasury would have books, not baubles," An'desha assured him.
"But we ought to go down, too, before they all get carried away in their
enthusiasm." Master Levy went with An'desha following him, taking the
stone stairs carefully, for they were quite steep. They also went down
farther than he expected, for the stone floor of the room above was at
least as thick as his hand was long, perhaps a little thicker, which
accounted for the fact that it hadn't rung hollow and had sounded like
solid stone to their footsteps.

It looked as if this room had actually been hollowed out of the bedrock
after the Tower itself had been built.

Although the air was a bit stuffy and very dusty, with a hint of strange
metallic scents, it was not at all damp. Nor was the room as gloomy and
ill-lit as An'desha had anticipated. There were more of those magical
lights everywhere, and as An'desha looked around, he had no doubt at all
just what Urtho had used this room for. It was a workshop, with
everything necessary for an inveterate tinkerer who was interested in
literally everything.

Needless to say, the room was very crowded, despite the fact that it was
just a little smaller than the main room above.

This was not a mage's classical workroom, a place where only magic took
place, and few if any physical components were needed. This was a place
where anything and everything could be worked with, played with,
investigated. Here was a bench with an array of glassware and rows of
jars that had once held chemicals both liquid and solid-most of the
former long since evaporated, leaving only dust or oily residue in the
bottoms of their bottles. There stood another bench with a small lathe,
clamps, a vise, and tools for working wood and ivory~ and beside it a
similar bench with the tools for shaping soft metals, and a third bench
with the tools for cutting and polishing lenses, glass, and crystal.
Looking incongruous beside that was a potter's wheel and glassblower's
pipes, and along the back wall were a forge, a kiln, a glassmaker's
furnace, and a smelter. They probably had once shared a chimney, long
since blocked up by the destruction of the Tower above. There 'were more
benches and work spaces set up, but from the staircase An'desha could
not tell what they were, only that most of them had been in use up to
the day of the Cataclysm.

An'desha simply stood and stared as the others wandered about, looking,
but not touching. Master Levy~ on the other hand, looked supremely
satisfied by what he saw, as he surveyed it all from the staircase.

"Now this is much more in my way of doing things," he said, folding his
arms across his chest and looking over the workshop with approval. "I
believe I could have liked this Urtho." On all of the benches-all of
them-were projects in various states of completion. It was difficult to
tell what some of them had been intended to do, if anything. There were
pages of notes arrayed neatly beside each of these projects; it appeared
that, in his workplace at least, Urtho was a tidy and methodical man.
Firesong stood beside a particular bench laden with some very odd
equipment indeed. He gazed on these pieces of paper with longing,
although he forbore to touch them.

"This is maddening," he complained, hovering over a small n to breathe
on sheaf of scrawled manuscript. "I'm afraid eve these things for fear
that they'll fall to dust, but I think I may die if I can't read what's
on the next page!" But something about the way the "paper" looked
stirred echoes in An'desha's deepest memories; he descended the last few
stairs and made his way over to what appeared to be a small jeweler's
workbench. There was a half -finished brooch there, nothing magical or
mechanical, obviously just a piece of jewelry in the shape of a
hummingbird to be inlaid with a mosaic of tiny agate-pieces formed into
stylized feathers.

"Wait," he muttered. The original design lay next to it, and after a
close examination of the sheet, An'desha picked it up.

Silverfox stifled a gasp, and Firesong bit off a protest. He waved the
intact and flexible drawing at them to prove it was not hurt by
handling.

"Pick up what you want," he urged, "It's not paper. Or rather, it isn't
like the paper we know and use now. It's a special rag-paper treated
with resins so it wouldn't disintegrate.

You can write on it in silverpoint, crayon, or graphite-stick, but not
ink; ink just beads up and won't penetrate."

"Really?" Master Levy walked to the bench nearest him and picked up
another piece of the paper. "Very useful around chemicals, I would
guess."

"Very useful around anything that might ruin your notes," Firesong
observed, snatching up the papers he had stared at so covetously.
"oh-now this--oh, my-" He held the papers up so that Silverfox could
peruse them, too, as between them they tried to decipher Urtho's notes
in ancient Kaled'a'in, using the Hawkbrother tongue Firesong knew and
Silverfox's modem Kaled'a'in as guides.

Che'sera looked at them curiously, but Lo'isha laughed at their
immediate absorption. "oh, we have lost them for a time," he said
indulgently. "I know that look. The weaver is one with the loom' "

"Not entirely," Firesong responded absently. "But I will be very pleased
when this scholar of Silverfox's shows up, so he can help us with this.
If these notes are right, this may be the answer to our isolation here."
He waved a hand at the bench and what looked to be a pair of mirrors
serving as the lids to a matching pair of boxes. "These are completed,
or all but some cosmetic frippery~ and they're supposed to act like a
pair of linked scrying spells, except they don't use true-magic, they
use mind-magic. Apparently it can work over-unknown, incredible
distances. Somehow they amplify it so that it only needs one person with
mind-magic to make both boxes work, or so I think this says." That made
every head in the place turn toward the Adept, and he finally looked up
from the notes he was sharing with Silverfox, shaking his hair out of
his eyes. "Got your attention then, did I?" he asked, with a sly smile.

If these devices use mind-magic, they won't be disrupted by the
mage-storms," commented a mental voice from above, and Altra flowed
gracefully down the staircase, taking a seat on one of the steps at
about head-height to the humans. "That would be more than merely useful.
If we learned how to use them, I could take one to Haven; if we learned
how to make them, I could take another to Solaris. And I certainly have
enough mind-magic to make them work, no matter who wishes to use them."

"I thought you said that you didn't want to jump anymore," Firesong said
sardonically. An'desha chuckled.

I don't want to, but devices like these could replace that aspect of my
duties as well as give us the resources of all of Master Levy's
colleagues at Haven," the Firecat replied with immense dignity. "For
that matter, if we could concoct a third device, I would not necessarily
have to lump it to Solaris; Hansa could come and get it instead."
An'desha hid a smile at the unspoken implication behind Altra's
statement, an implication that Altra felt his colleague and fellow
Firecat had been getting off a bit too easily in the transportation
department.

Our ability to jump is partly true-magic, partly mindmagic," the Firecat
continued, for once without any hint of irony or mockery in his
mind-voice. "It is growing hazardous for passengers to jump with us, as
Master Levy and Sejanes discovered. It is no longer comfortable for us
to jump very long distances, and I was not exaggerating earlier about
how I felt when we arrived. I was exhausted and drained, not a common
occurrence until now. I can predict a time very soon when it could
become actually inconceivably dangerous for us to jump. But if we have a
way to communicate with Haven and Karse-such a thing would be beyond
price."

"I had deduced that for myself, thank you," Firesong replied with a
touch of acid. "If you can just conjure up that Kaled'a'in scholar, we
have a chance of learning how to use these things before the time comes
when you can't take one back to Valdemar."

"The scholar will be here soon," Che'sera put in, looking up from the
glassware bench. His dark-blue clothing reflected richly from the
surface of the dusty glassware. "The main problem has been that since
his assistant is a-what do you call the lizard-folk-?"

"Hertasi," Silverfox interjected. The handsome kestra'chern' s face lit
up at Che'sera's words. "Ah, so it is Tarm who is coming! Oh, that is
very good, he may be frail, but he is the finest scholar in the ancient
version of our tongue outside the lands of White Gryphon, and a good
being as well." Silverfox seemed immensely relieved by what Che'sera had
said, and that in itself made An'desha feel as if they were all
beginning to make some progress at last.

"Yes. It seems the problem has been to find a way to bring both of them
in a gryphon four-harness carry-basket and still keep the hertasi warm
without magic." Che'sera left the glassware-bench, and moved back toward
the staircase.

"when I left, a means had been devised, and they were planning on
arriving within two or three days of when I expected to be here. They
had only to manufacture this device, whatever it was, and then they
could leave. I would have told you earlier, when I first arrived, but
you all seemed quite busy, and I had business with An'desha that I
wished to conclude before I dealt with anything else. "That is even
better news!" Now Firesong seemed much happier as well, so much so that
he forbore to comment on that last statement. "I vote that if we can't,
on superficial examination, find anything more important to investigate
than these devices, we'll concentrate on those for our immediate goal.
If we can communicate with all of the mages and Artificers on a regular
basis, it will be as good as being at Haven with all the advantages of
being here in the Tower to implement what we deduce." He looked around
at the rest of the party, most of whom shrugged with indifference or
bafflement. "You and Sejanes should be the ones to decide. I'll be of
very little use without a translator in any event," Master Levy said
with great candor.

"At the moment, I have nothing really to work on, as I believe we need
to develop a new set of theories to match the changed conditions. Those,
I feel, must come from things we can learn by studying the Cataclysm
itself and Urtho's own methodologies.

So until the translator arrives, what I can and will do, is attempt to
find out if this place holds any more secrets in the floor."

"Very little use!" Firesong actually snorted. "After you were the one
who found this place! No false modesty, thank you, Master Levy!"

"I may be of some slight assistance here below," Che'sera said, with
great caution. "I shall examine those objects that seem to partake of
the nature of the shaman, and see if I may make something of them. We
Shin'a'in lost some things when the Cataclysm destroyed our land and
sundered the Clans. I may be able to rediscover some of what was lost,
and that may be of some help." Hah! An'desha thought with triumph. Now I
know what you are, o mysterious one! Both Sworn to the Old One and a
shaman! Now, is it a need to keep an eye on all these mages that brings
you here, or was it the hope of keeping us from finding things that the
Clans would rather we didn't learn? Is it an interest in what you might
find within the walls of this Tower, or is it something else altogether?
Myself, perhaps?

It could be, but he was not going to have the hubris to assume that the
latter was the case. There were plenty of reasons for the Kal'enedral to
want a shaman here; most of the Sworn were not leshy'a with a direct
link to the Star-Eyed, though they could all walk the Moonpaths when
they chose.

Although An'desha had seen more than one or two of the Veiled Ones
about, they had never stayed for very long, and he had the feeling that
they were not "permitted" to take a physical form for too long-perhaps
just long enough to serve some specific need, or be in themselves a kind
of message.

The Moonpaths  ...  perhaps I ought to go walk them myself.

I haven't seen or spoken to Tre'valen and Dawnfire since we burned out
that weapon of Urtho's.

Firesong looked up, as if distracted for a moment, and cast a
speculative look at An'desha. "You know," he began, "it is all too
fortuitous, that we find these things." An'desha smiled a little as he
noticed Che'sera looking at him in a similar way. He heard himself
saying, "It is the way of the Star-Eyed to provide such opportunities
for those who will help themselves. If I were you, Id be careful with
these new finds, for She is unlikely to hand over easy answers. The mind
that controls the hand must use the tool wisely, and all tools can harm
their user." Firesong grunted, and actually looked for a moment as if he
could be considering those words in the way a Shin'a'in would
acknowledge the cryptic advice of a shaman as being worthy of
meditation. Then the Adept shrugged a little and made off with the sheaf
of notes.

An'desha looked about the workshop to see what the others were doing;
Che'sera cracked a slight smile and rejoined Lo'isha, huddling together
over a workbench's treasures in the far corner. Sejanes was examining
the bench with some of the equipment that An'desha could not immediately identify.

Firesong and Silverfox were halfway up the staircase in no time, with
their papers in their hands, chattering to one another and ignoring
everything else about them. Master Levy was already back up on what
An'desha was now thinking of as the "ground" floor, and Karal was
probably still asleep. There might or might not be other Kal'enedral
besides Che'sera about; they preferred to spend much of their time in
the camp on the surface, and since he had arbitrarily taken care of
dinner preparations, there was really no need for any of them to be
inside the Tower at this point. This would be as good a time as any to
walk the Moonpaths undisturbed.

He went up the stairs as quietly as he could, nodding to Altra on the
way. The Firecat nodded back with immense dignity, then turned to follow
Firesong and Silverfox, tail waving like a jaunty banner. Evidently he
wanted to hear what they were up to, probably because they were the most
interesting creatures in the Tower at this, moment.

An'desha turned his steps in toward the sleeping chamber.

Karal was, indeed, still asleep. He noticed as he paused in the doorway
that Master Levy was in the side chamber where An'desha and Karal had
found indications of another trapdoor.

The Artificer was back down on his hands and knees and peering at the
pattern in the floor. Florian was beside him, occasionally tapping a
hoof on the stone at his direction.

An'desha tiptoed past Karal to his own sleeping place. You know, if I
look more as if I'm taking a nap, I'm less likely to be disturbed. He
pulled off his boots and curled up in his bedroll, arranging himself in
what he thought was a very natural-looking position.

It occurred to him as he closed his eyes that he was being very
secretive about this, when there really was no reason for him to do so.
On the other hand, I don't think I want Che'sera to know everything I'm
doing until I know more about him. If Che'sera turned out to be as rigid
and inflexible as jarim first was, or as hidebound as the shaman of
An'desha' s home Clan, it would be easier to keep away from him and his
demands if he wasn't aware of everything An'desha knew or could do. All
I've told him is that the Avatars appear to me, not that I can go look
for them. I think I'll keep it that way for now He settled himself
comfortably, then slowed his breathing and began the combination of
relaxation and tension that marked a Moonpath trance. This, for those
who were not trained in the technique, was more difficult than it
sounded; too much tension and the trance state would never be reached,
too much relaxation brought on a nap rather than a trance. Once he
hovered on the edge of trance, with all of his attention focused, and
nothing from the "real" world intruding, he sent his mind going in, and
then out, in the pattern that Tre'valen had shown him, that felt like so very long ago.

He found himself, in his vision, standing on a path made of silvery sand
that sparkled with a subdued glimmer, in the midst of an opalescent mist
that swirled all around him. Or rather, he seemed to be standing there;
this body was an illusory one, and he could change it to another form if
he concentrated on it. This was a comfortable form, one he didn't have
to think about to maintain, and it didn't seem reasonable to waste time
and energy changing it to something else. He still was not certain if
the Moonpaths themselves were an illusion; he had never bothered to test his surroundings to find out.

The mist had no scent, and was neither cool nor warm; the sand beneath
his feet neither so soft as to impede his steps, nor so hard as to be
noteworthy.

"Tre'valen?" he called out into the mist, his voice echoing off into the
distance in a way that had no counterpart in the real world. "Dawnfire?"
The mist swirled about him, following his words with eddies of faint
colors that faded within moments.

He had no answer immediately, but he didn't expect one.

The Avatars were not in existence to serve and please him, after all,
and he was well aware of that. Instead, he moved out along the path of
soft sand, occasionally calling the names of his friends quietly into
the mist. Eventually, if they were not occupied with something more
important, they would come to him.

And so they did. They came winging through the mist in their bird
shapes, forms the shape of a vorcel-hawk, but the size of a human, and
with the sparkling, flame multicolored plumage of a firebird. He knew
they were coming before they arrived, for they lit up the mist in the
far distance like lightning within a thundercloud as they flew toward
him, their flight paths spiraling around each other, leaving a double
helix of light through the fog in their wakes.

Here they did not need to backwing to a landing as they would if they
had taken "real" hawk-forms in the world. They simply slowed, then went
into a hover above the path, then flowed into the vaguely avian-human
shapes they normally wore to speak to him. Tre'valen was dressed as the
Shin'a'in shaman he had been before he became the Star-Eyed's Avatar;
but Dawnfire, though clearly Tayledras rather than Shin'a'in, wore a
simple tunic that could not be readily identified as coming from any
particular culture. Her long silver hair moved slightly, like the mist
that swirled slowly about her.

They both seemed to be completely ordinary humans-except for their eyes.

Not eyes, but eye-shaped windows on the night sky...  the darkness of
all of night spangled with the brightest of stars.

So beautiful… It was said that Kal'enel Herself had eyes like that;
in this way She marked these two as Her Avatars, a way that could not be mistaken for anything else.

"Younger Brother!" Tre'valen greeted him warmly. "It is far too long
since we have seen you, but I pledge that we have not been idle in that
interval!"

"Not all that long for a mere mortal," he corrected with a smile, "but a great deal has been happening to us as well. I was not certain if you
knew about what we have uncovered and learned, and besides that, I
wanted to make sure that you two were all right after the Working." Not
that I could have done anything if they weren't.

Dawnfire shrugged fluidly. "Poor young Karal bore the brunt of our
Working, and we two were only a little drained," she said, and extended
a cool hand to him, which he took in brief greeting. "It sounds as if
you have not been idle either-you in the Tower." That confirmed one of
his guesses, that the Avatars, for all their power, were neither
omniscient nor omnipotent.

They were bound by some physical laws at least. Was that because they
were not really physically "dead," as the spirit-Kal'enedral were? Or
was it because they had been granted wider powers by the Star-Eyed?

"Would you like to tell me what you can, or hear what news I have
first?" he asked.

"Your news; I suspect that much of what we have to tell You will be mere
confirmation of what you already know," Tre'valen told him. "We have
been ranging far in the world and in the Void, to see what changes the
Working wrought on the energy-patterns of the Storms, and how
far-reaching those changes were. I fear I bring no startlingly good
news." An'desha nodded, and detailed everything that had been happening
since the "Working" of which Karal had been the channel; from the effect
that being the focus of so much energy had wrought on the young Karsite
priest, to the departure of the gryphons and the arrival of Sejanes and
Master Len to the comings and goings of so many Kal'enedral, to
Che'sera's intense interest in him. Lastly, he described the events of
the afternoon, the opening of the hidden trapdoor and the discovery of
the workshops below.

They both listened with concentration and apparent interest and surprise
when he described the workshops. So, the existence of the workshop is
something that the Star-Eyed did not tell them, though Her agents have
certainly been about. Interesting.

"There may be answers there," Tre'valen said at last, and for a fleeting
moment, his face took on that "listening" expression that Karal wore
when either Florian or Altra Mindspoke him. An'desha wondered if the
Star-Eyed might be speaking to Her Avatar at that instant, and his next
words might have been a confirmation of that. "Certainly Firesong should
pursue the investigation of the mind-mirrors; they should not be
difficult to revive nor to duplicate, and they will serve you all in the
days to come." Oh, my; even more interesting. Perhaps my intuition about the Star-Eyed's providence was well-founded.

Dawnfire placed one long hand on Tre'valen's shoulder and, with a rueful expression, admitted, "This is the only concrete advice we can give at the moment. Would it were otherwise, but the future is still trackless and without a clear path. And even our Goddess is bound by constraints She cannot break, so that we may all work out our futures with a free will." An'desha sighed, but saw no reason to doubt her. "So we are still muddling our way through a point when there are many futures possible? I had hoped after the Working that we would at least have gotten our feet on a clear path again!" Tre'valen looked uneasy. "The danger has only been postponed, not negated, but luckily the forces involved have not worsened," he told An'desha. "You knew that the Working was not a solution to the mage-storms, only a reprieve, and that has not changed."

"We have been tracking the results of the Working since the initial
release of the energy contained in Urtho's weapon." Dawnfire took up the thread of conversation. "The effect is all that one could have wished over Valdemar, the Pelagirs, Karse and Rethwellan and even Hardorn. The waves that you sent out are canceling the waves of the mage-storms, but-only to a point."

"What point?" he asked instantly, sensing that this was important,
although he did not know why yet.

"Just beyond the border of Hardorn in the East," Tre'valen told him.
"Also South, just at the borders of the Haighlei Empire, and around
White Gryphon and its environs, but they know how to deal with the
effects. And in any case, the Storms are weak there. North, well into
the Ice-Wall Mountains.

To the West, well, that is Pelagir-wilds and the Storms will hardly
change that. It is East that concerns us, for the Empire is the
recipient of the worst of the Storms, and they are causing great havoc
there, among those who depend so much upon magic." An'desha gave that
some thought. "That could be good for us, or bad," he said finally.
"Given what the Emperor did to us, I'm not at all sad to hear that they
are having troubles. I'd rather that the Empire was so busy trying to
hold itself together that they had no time to think of us, but Duke
Tremane thought we were the source of the Storms, and what if the
Emperor's people assume the same and retaliate?" Tre'valen nodded.
"Precisely. Warn your friends, An'desha, and when the mind-mirrors are
working and in place, use them to warn Valdemar. Such things could be
possible-" Could be possible, he says. Yet if I understand the
constraints the Avatars labor under, pointing out something specifically
as possible may be the only warning they are allowed to give of a future
they have seen. Or perhaps not ... Despite the unpleasant information,
An'desha felt a warm glow of satisfaction. The Avatars avoided giving
direct advice most of the time, but he was getting better at deducing
what they wanted him to think about, and what information was the most
critical to the current situation.

"What about the Storms themselves?" he asked. "Eventually, they're going
to become strong enough to overcome the counter-Storm we sent out,
aren't they? That's why we knew what we did was only going to be
temporary-" He watched Tre'valen's face carefully and took his cues from
the faint changes in expression, as he suspected he was supposed to do.

"-so eventually, what happens? We're getting a-a reversal of the
original Cataclysm, am I right? That was why we used this spot for the
Working, because it's the place where the waves converge. Eventually the
Storms are going to overcome the Working, and build up to something very
bad?" He swallowed uncomfortably as Tre'valen's slight nod told him he
was on the right track. "So then what? Obviously, the Storms that got
set off aren't going to-go back into the weapons and things they came
from. Do we get the Cataclysm all over again?" Tre'valen shook his head,
but not in negation, and Dawnfire spread her hands wide. "That is just
what we do not know," she admitted. "And I confide in you-neither does
She. There are too many possibilities, and some of them rest on very
subtle factors. We do not yet know what the mages and Powers of the
Empire will do, and that will have an effect. There are many things that
you could do here, all of them effective,

"but in different ways and with differing results. Probably there will
be another, lesser Cataclysm, unless you here manage to do one of the
things that could avert or absorb it. There are many things you could
do; you could do nothing whatsoever, as well, and from any action that
is taken there are the possibilities of prosperity or ruin in varying
degrees. Whatever happens, that is all we can tell you for certain." He
groaned. "That is not much comfort!" he complained.

"But I suppose that it gives me enough to tell the others for now."
Tre'valen managed a ghost of a smile. "We never pledged to bring you
comfort, younger brother," he chided gently. "Only enough help that you
need not make your decisions blind, deaf, and ignorant."

"Let me ask about something closer to home, then," An'desha replied.
"Che'sera. What is Che'sera to me, or I to Che'sera? Sooner or later he
will deduce the source of my information, whether or not I actually say
where it comes from in his presence." Tre'valen's expression softened
with affection. "What is Che'sera to you? Simply enough-a teacher, if
you should decide, for yourself, that you wish to learn what he has to
teach.

And what are you to Che'sera? Largely, affirmation. He has been
searching for someone to pass his knowledge on to, and he hopes that you
will be that person. But it must be your decision, and he will not urge
it upon you. He is-a good man, and much in the same way of thinking as
Master Ulrich was;

Karal will be like him, one day." So. There it was, out in the open at
last; his invitation to become a shaman. And not, perhaps, just any
shaman, but one Sworn to the Goddess in her aspect as Wisdom Keeper. He
sighed, wishing that he could be as certain of what he wanted as Karal
was. But at least now he knew that Che'sera was neither a fanatic nor
inflexible. That took a few worries from his shoulders, at least.

"You will be seeing more of us in days to come," Dawnfire told him, her
sweet face full of seriousness. "I promise you, An'desha, we will tell
you and help you all that we can; we see no good reason to leave you
without aids and guides in this-" Tre'valen looked out into the mists
suddenly. and right now, we must go," Tre'valen interrupted her.

"There are more things we must investigate and watch for you. Fare well,
younger brother! Time is running, and it is not on our side." And with
that, An'desha found himself alone again on the Moonpaths, as if the
Avatars had never been there. With no further reason to remain, he sent
his awareness dropping slowly back into his physical self, going down,
then out-As he slowly woke his senses, he heard Karal stirring at last,
and smelled the distinctive scent of the meat and bean mixture he had
prepared earlier. His stomach growled, and he opened his eyes.

"I brought you some dinner," Karal said, looking at him intently as he
handed An'desha a bowl. "You were with them, weren't you?" Karal hooked
his thumbs together and made flapping gestures with his fingers by way
of definition.

He saw no reason to deny it, and nodded as he sat up slowly, and
accepted the bowl and spoon from Karal. "They didn't tell me anything we
didn't already know, or at least not much. I'll let Firesong and Sejanes
know as soon as I've eaten." Karal looked better than he had in days,
and An'desha wondered if that was all due to the work of the Shin'a'in
Healer, or if the Avatars had a hand in it. He suspected the latter, and
not for the first time wondered what the link between Vkandis and the
Shin'a'in Goddess was. The Avatars seemed quite drawn to Karal, and he
to them.

On the other hand, they are very compassionate by nature, and he
certainly deserves compassion and sympathy.

"Florian and I are going out for some fresh air. Do you want to go with
us?" Karal invited nonchalantly. "I'm tired of being down underground
like a hibernating bear; I want to see the sun before I go mad." He
shook his head. "I can't imagine how that mage was able to stand being
cooped up in here."

"You may see the sun, but you won't feel it," An'desha cautioned." It's
so cold that if you pour out a cup of water it'll be ice before it hits
the ground."

"So I'll bundle up," Karal shrugged. "I've felt cold before.

Karse isn't exactly a pleasure garden in winter, and up in the hills,
there's snow on the ground for half the year. I'm beginning to
sympathize with the gryphons; if I don't see some open sky, I'm going to
start babbling."

"Then I'll go with you." It didn't take An'desha very long to pull on a
heavy tunic, a second of the same weight, then his quilted Shin'a'in
coat over it all, but Karal needed a little more help getting all that
clothing on. He was quite steady on his feet, however, which An'desha
took to be a good sign of his recovery.

By now, Master Levy was deep in his prodding and poking of the floor,
and he jotted down measurements and diagrams in one of his notebooks.
Silverfox and Firesong were sitting on their heels, the pages of notes
neatly stacked in front of them, regarding another sheaf of their own
notes with some dubiousness." Where are you two going?" Silverfox called as the three of them passed by.

"We're going out for some fresh air," Karal replied. "Why don't you join us? We'll go frighten the Shin'a'in into thinking what you found in the workroom turned us all into monsters." He made a hideous face and Silverfox laughed.

"Fresh air? Not a bad idea." Firesong raised his head as Karal tendered
his invitation. "We aren't making much more out of these notes. Maybe a
little sun will wake up my mind.

Go on out, we'll catch up with you." An'desha noticed at once that their
hosts had been at work on the tunnel to the surface-the opening they had
made into the side of the Tower was large and quite regular, without any
debris of broken masonry to trip over. The tunnel was also wider, though
no higher, and there had been some extensive work done in shoring it up
since the last time he'd come through it. It was still claustrophobic,
but on this trip he no longer had the feeling that the tunnel was going
to collapse and trap him at any moment.

He sent a small mage-light on ahead of Karal; he couldn't see past
Florian's rump, so a mage-light was hardly of much use to him. Altra had
declined to come, saying that he had seen quite enough of snow, and was
planning another nap in Karal's bed.

He scented the outside before he saw any indication they were nearing
the entrance. Although the air below remained remarkably clean, and the
scents that lingered, thanks to some small magics on his part and
Firesong's, were all pleasant in nature, there was a fresh quality to
the outside air that nothing below could duplicate. Some of that was due
to the cold, but not all.

The other thing they could not duplicate below was the light. As he
stumbled out into the late afternoon sunlight, he squinted and put out a
hand to steady himself against Florian's side. There wasn't a single
cloud in the sky; the great bowl of the sky itself was an intense and
blinding blue, and with all of the glare reflected off the snow, there
was as much light coming from below as above.

Karal stood to one side, taking in huge gulps of air, his pale face
taking on more color with every breath. Florian trotted off and kicked
up his heels friskily.

Seen from the outside, the Tower itself was hardly more than a
snow-frosted stub of melted-looking rock protruding from a snow-covered,
rolling hill; the only projection above the otherwise flat Plains at
all, not prepossessing except for its size. Because they had dug a long,
slanting tunnel to reach the wall of the Tower below, the entrance came
out quite some distance from the remains of the Tower itself, and it was
at the foot of the Tower, precisely above the point where they had
broken into the walls, that the Shin'a'in had pitched their
tent-village. The round felt tents, white and brown and black, made a
very orderly and neat array against the snow, so neat and orderly that
it looked like a model rather than a place where people were actually
living and working.

"Whoof!" Firesong exclaimed from behind An'desha, as Florian frisked and
gamboled in the snow with Karal laughing and throwing snowballs for him
to dodge. "Very bright out here! I shouldn't wonder if you could get a
worse sunburn than in high summer!" Silverfox ducked as Karal turned and
lobbed a snowball at them. Karal laughed, and the kestra'chern pelted
after him, swearing vengeance, while Firesong looked on indulgently.

"So," the Adept asked quietly, while Karal and Silverfox took shelter
behind facing snowbanks, and hurled missiles at each other. "What did
your Avatars have to say for themselves?"

An'desha flung him a startled glance, and Firesong chuckled at his
expression. "You have a certain quiet glow after you've gone visiting
them," the mage told him. "It's not terribly obvious, but it's there if
you know what to look for. So?

What did they have to say? Anything useful?"

"Mostly that nothing has changed that much. We've successfully bought
some time for ourselves and our friends, things outside the areas we
protected are deteriorating quickly, and eventually even our time will
run out," An'desha said, wishing his news was better.

Firesong nodded, unsurprised. "And when our time runs out, we'll
get-what? A replication of the Cataclysm? After all, everything is
supposedly converging here."

"Maybe. Even They don't know for sure." An'desha sighed.

"If She has any idea, She's not saying anything. If you want my guess,
the gods are doing what They always do-unless and until all life is
threatened with catastrophe, They'll see to it we have the tools and the
information to find our own solutions, then leave us alone to find them.
The Avatars think the things we're finding in the Tower will help us,
but-"

"'But there's no clear 'future' to see or even guess at." Firesong
looked surprisingly philosophical. "I'm determined to see this as an
opportunity; for once in my life there isn't a god or a spirit or the
hand of fate or prophecy or anything else demanding that I trace a
certain pattern on the pages of time.

We're going to make our own future here, An'desha, and nothing is going
to interfere with us to make it go some other god ordained way. There's a certain satisfaction in that, you know."

"I suppose so," An'desha replied; he would have said more, but Silverfox
suddenly broke off the snowball fight to peer into the north, and point.

"Look!" he exclaimed with glee, as Karal dropped his final snowball
without throwing it to squint in the direction he indicated. "Gryphons!
Yes! They have a carry-basket, and I think they've brought Tarm!"
An'desha shaded his eyes and narrowed them against the glare, and
finally made out four sets of flapping wings with a half-round shape
beneath them. He couldn't think what else would have that particular
configuration except four gryphons and a large carry-basket.

"Come on!" Silverfox crowed. "Let's go meet them!" He set off at a run;
Florian loped up and half-knelt beside Karal, who pulled himself onto
the Companion's back. The two of them quickly overtook Silverfox;
Firesong cast an amused glance at An'desha and indicated the others with a finger.

"Shall we trundle along behind?" he asked.

"It would only be polite," An'desha pointed out. "And besides, the
Shin'a'in have cleared a perfectly fine path between here and there. It
would be a shame not to use it." They followed in Silverfox's wake,
though at a more leisurely pace. By the time they arrived at the
Shin'a'in tent-village, the gryphons and their passengers had already
landed and been taken into one of the tents. It was easy to tell which
one; there was only one that was large enough to hold four gryphons at
once, and only one whose pallet of snow had been churned by gryphon
claws.

Dark-clad Kal'enedral nodded as Firesong waved to them, then went about
their own business. An'desha pulled the entrance flap aside, and he and
the mage entered the tent, being careful to let in as little cold air as
possible. It took quite a bit of time for An'desha's eyes to adjust to
the darkness inside the tent after all the snow glare outside; he stayed
where he was while he waited, listening to the chatter of at least half
a dozen creatures all speaking at once.

He looked around as soon as he could make anything at all out; he didn't
recognize any of the gryphons, but he hadn't expected to. They were all
arranged at one side of the tent, and it came as no surprise to see that
they were eating-or rather, gorging. Not only would they have to recover
from the stress of carrying their passengers all the way from K'leshya
Vale, but they would have to recover from the stress of dealing with the cold as well.

Karal was conversing with the gryphons, occasionally helping them where
the quarters were too cramped for them to move themselves. Silverfox,
however, was engaged in a highspeed conversation with a gray-muzzled,
but jaunty-looking kyree.

This odd creature, vaguely wolflike as to the head and coat, but also
vaguely catlike in body shape and proportions, was easily the size of a
small calf. An'desha knew more about kyrees from personal experience
than from Falconsbane's memories, as Mornelithe Falconsbane in all of
his incarnations had very little to do with the creatures. An'desha, on
the other hand, was quite familiar with Rris, the kyree representative
to the Kingdom of Valdemar and the Alliance. Rris might look like this
old fellow many years from now; his muzzle was quite white, and his head
was liberally salted with paler hairs among the black. He was tired, but
clearly in good spirits, and he chatted with Silverfox like the old
friend he probably was.

Or to be more accurate, Silverfox chattered; the kyree, who could only
Mindspeak, nodded and made replies in his own inaudible fashion. Until
Tarm chose to "speak" in the "public" mode, no one would hear him except those he chose.

With him, bundled in so many layers of quilted clothing he resembled a
roll of brightly colored Kaled'a'in bed coverings, was a hertasi. He was
practically sitting on a brazier, since the lizard-folk were very
susceptible to cold. It wasn't that they were cold-blooded, precisely,
it was that they were not able to control their own body temperatures
very efficiently. Opinions were divided on whether hertasi had been
created by Urtho or by an accident involving magic, but in either case
their physiology had some flaws, and this was the major one.

The poor thing could very easily lose limbs to the cold, or would go
involuntarily into a kind of hibernation. Layers of clothing would not
necessarily help this, especially not during a long journey in bitter
cold, hence the brazier now and whatever other measures the Kaled'a'in
had taken. All that could be seen of this hertasi was the end of the
snout and a pair of alert, bright, and apparently happy eyes peeking out of the depths of the hood.

A great deal more of Tarm was visible. An'desha knew kyree from his
acquaintance with Rris, but he had not had much opportunity to get to
know any hertasi. A few had come with Silverfox and the Kaled'a'in
delegation to Valdemar, but he hadn't had much to do with them. And of
course, Falconsbane was universally despised by both races, in all his
lives, so he would hardly have had any congress with them.

At just that moment, the hertasi spoke up; the hertasi associated with
the Kaled'a'in tended to vocalize far more often than they used
Mindspeech, the exact reverse of the habits of the ones associated with
the Hawkbrothers.

"I believe I am thawed enough to make the dash for the Tower," he said,
in a high-pitched voice with hints of a whistling sound underlying the
tone.

Excellent, Lyam," the kyree replied. "They tell me our baggage is
already there, waiting for us. If we truly make a dash, you won't get
too much of a chill."

"Florian says he'll be happy to carry Lyam, if Lyam thinks he can cling
on," Karal spoke up. "Florian can get him to the tunnel mouth faster
than he can get there on foot." He turned toward the hertasi, polite but
a little uncertain in addressing such an odd creature. "A Companion's
gait is very smooth, and I've never heard of one losing a rider, and you should see one run!"

"I have never tried riding, but if I can get from White Gryphon to here
without the loss of limb or tail, I think I should be able to survive an
attempt on a Companion's back," the hertasi said with warm good humor.
"And almost anything is worth not having to walk through snow myself!"

"We ssshall ssstay here overnight," one of the gryphons said.
"Thisss issss verry comforrrtable, and we do not want to go
underrgrround even to sssee the Towerrr!" The others nodded with
agreement.

"It isss wonderrrful to be wherrre the grrreat Ssskandrrranon once
wasss, but he did not have to crrrawl underrrgrrround," said another,
flicking his wings nervously. "I do not know how Trrreyvan and Hydona
borrre it." The kyree didn't shrug, but An'desha had the impression that
if he could have, he would have. "Suit yourselves; you will have to make do with my descriptions, then."

"Yourrr dessscrrriptionsss will be asss if we werrre therrre," the first
gryphon said firmly. "I will fly the ssssky that Ssskandrranon flew, and
that will be enough forr me." Tarm stood up, and shook himself
thoroughly. "One more dash, then, and we will be where no kyree or
hertasi has set foot in thousands of years!" He seemed to relish the
prospect with scarcely-restrained glee, and the air of a creature a
quarter of his apparent age. "Well, friends, let us take these last few
paces at the gallop!"

Firesong, who had known many kyree and hertasi in his life, was
comfortable with these two immediately. Tarm had all of the warmth and
wisdom of Irrl, one of Firesong's academic teachers, and Lyam had a
great deal more assertiveness than most of the normally-timid Vales-bred
hertasi. Although Firesong loved to be petted and made much of by his
own hertasi, he had always found the shyness of the Vale hertasi
something of an irritation. Someone once suggested that their manner was
reflective of the deep trauma they had suffered during the Cataclysm,
and that worried him deeply; if that was so, how would they react to
another such event?

They'll cope, I suppose; it's the thing they do best. I don't know how
they manage.

Both kyree and hertasi were at heart cave- and den-dwellers, and both of
the new arrivals were obviously comfortable in the Tower. They settled
into the same room shared by Karal and An'desha with every evidence of
content. They had not yet moved in their luggage, but the Shin'a'in had
brought appropriate bedding material for both of the new guests-and
extra warming pans for both beds. As far as personal belongings went,
the two had traveled much lighter than he had expected.

Their main luggage consisted of boxes of very special writing materials;
books of tough paper with waterproof metal covers that locked over the
contents like protective boxes, and ink that would never run once it had
dried, even if water was spilled directly on it. Tarm was a historian;
not a traditional kyree historian like Rris, who memorized and recited
from memory but the kind of historian like the Chronicler of Valdemar,
who attempted to personally view as much as possible of epochal events,
and to note the honest and bare facts in record-books called Chronicles.
Only when those hard facts had been listed would Tarm then make his own
interpretations of the events, written separately in Commentaries.

Tarm was very serious about his calling; he would rather have the fur
pulled out of his tail until it was as naked as a rat's than put a
personal interpretation in the Chronicles.

Actually, that wasn't precisely true. Tarm would dictate, for, having no
hands, he could not write. Lyam would do the actual writing. Lyam was
Tarm's third secretary in a long life as a historian, and his
relationship with the kyree was obviously based on affection and mutual
respect. Normally it was Lyam who cared for the kyree's needs, but with
Lyam just now the one who was in need, Tarm was seeing to it in a quiet
and dignified manner that Lyam got first priority.

Lyam needed warmth more than anything else, and Karal volunteered to
take care of him. Firesong had an idea that he knew why, too. At heart,
Karal still considered himself to be the young secretary who had ridden
to Valdemar from Karse, and he must be feeling a great deal of empathy
for Lyam.

That's good; they are both strangers in strange places, and it will do
them good to have a friend with the same-outlook?

Status? They have a lot in common, anyway.

Tarm, however, was quite ready for work, and looked it. He had been
consulting with Silverfox all the way here from the tent-village.
Firesong could not imagine where he was getting the energy.

He approached Firesong with Silverfox still in tow as soon as Karal took
Lyam off to be wrapped up in warmed blankets and given something hot to
drink.

"Firesong, Tarm wants to speak with you privately, before we get to
work," Silverfox told him, with a quizzical expression." He says he has
something for you, but he can't tell me what it is." The kyree nodded
his head as Firesong turned to look down on him with surprise. "Indeed,
Firesong k'treva," Tarm said with grave courtesy. "I have. Would you
come with me to where they have brought our belongings?"

"Certainly," Firesong replied with equal courtesy. "Would you prefer
that I Mindspoke with you?" That will not be necessary, but thank you,"
Tarm replied, turning and walking slowly toward the heap of bundles that the Shin'a'in had left just inside the main room of the Tower.

It is not that this is a secret matter," the kyree continued. "It is
simply that I have not been given permission to say anything to anyone
else before I discharged my obligation."

"Oh?" This was getting odder with every moment. Firesong couldn't think
of anything or anyone among the Kaled'a'in of k'leshya Vale who would
have had anything to send to him.

Tarm stopped beside the pile of belongings. "If you will please remove
the three bags of Lyam's clothing there," he indicated the drab bundles
with his forepaw, "-you win find what I brought you beneath them. It is
wrapped in blue wool, and it is very long and narrow." Firesong easily
moved the three packages, revealing a long, narrow packet wrapped in
blue wool cloth and tied with string. Firesong picked it up.

And it Mindspoke to him.

Hello, boy." The grating, decidedly female voice was all too familiar to him, although it was not one he had expected to hear ever again.

"Need?" he gasped, as he tore at the wrappings, trying to free the blade
within. Lyam must have wrapped it; the string was tied in a complicated
knot-pattern only a hertasi or a kestra'chern could admire. He finally
pulled off the string, the fabric fell away, and there was the ancient
spell-bound sword.

She looked precisely as she had the last time he saw her, strapped to
Falconsbane's "daughter" Nyara's side as she and Herald Skif rode out of
Valdemar to become Selenay's envoys to the Kaled'a'in and Tayledras, and
possibly to the Shin'a'in as well.

"Need, what are you doing here?" He hadn't been taken so completely by
surprise since-since he'd been kidnapped by his ancestor Vanyel!

"Nyara doesn't require me anymore; she's better off on her own," the
sword said to him. "There's nothing at k'leshya that she, Skif, or the
Kaled'a'in can't handle. You, on the other hand, are dealing with very
old magics. I am very old magic, and I still recall quite a bit. I
helped you once before, and I'm hoping I can help you again." Firesong
held the sword in both hands, and stared at it. It was very
disconcerting to be Mindspeaking with what should have been an inanimate
object. A sword didn't have a face to read, eyes to look into, and it
was difficult to tell if it could read his expressions.

But there's something about all this that doesn't quite make sense yet.

"I find myself wondering if there is something more to this than just an
urge to help us here," he said finally. "You've never put yourself in
nonfemale hands before." Hmm-let's say I've never done it deliberately,
but it has happened, and it was usually with lads who had the same taste
in men as my "daughters." The sword chuckled, but he sensed there was
still a lot more than she was telling, and he decided to press her for
it.

Try again," he said sternly in Mindspeech. "You're avoiding my
question." A sword could not sigh, but he got that sensation from her.

All right. I could tell you to work it out yourself, but why waste time?
You've got mage-storms disrupting magic; you've managed to get them
canceled out for the moment, but we all know this is only a temporary
respite, not a solution. I'm magic. I've managed to hold myself together
this long, but each Storm gets stronger, and sooner or later I'm going
to lose to one. I don't know what will happen when I lose, but it's
going to happen." She paused for a moment. "Worst case is that I'll go
up in fire and molten metal, the way the sword was made. Best case is
that the magic will just unravel, and there won't be anything here but a
perfectly ordinary sword." He had never once thought that Need might be
affected by the Storms; she had always struck him as being so capable,
so impervious, that it never occurred to him that she might have been in trouble.

This bothered him. "I can't promise anything," he said soberly. "I
don't even know if we're going to survive the end of this ourselves." To his surprise, the sword laughed, though rather sardonically. "You think I don't know that - If I go pfft, I don't want little Nyara to see it happen. She had enough troubles in her life and she shouldn't lose an old friend and teacher in that unexpected a fashion. Besides, if I'm going to go, I want to do it while I'm trying to accomplish something. How could I miss a chance at getting my hand in on what you're trying to do. It's complicated, it's dangerous, it's challenging, it's irresistible."

"If you say so," he said aloud, but strapped the sword on anyway, for
she required his presence to be able to see and hear clearly. Without a
bearer, it took incredible effort for her to perceive anything, and at
that it was only dimly. He didn't often carry a blade, and she felt very odd, slung across his back in Tayledras fashion. "An'desha will probably be happy to see you, but you're going to have to explain yourself to the rest. They don't know anything about you." And the gods only know what the Shin'a'in are going to make of her. Yes, Kethry had carried her, and Kerowyn after that, but still-she was yet another creature of magic inside the heart of the Plains. How much more were they going to be willing to allow?

I can't wait," Need replied, with a bit less irony than he expected.
"There's something rather amusing about the reactions people get the
first time I talk to them." Amusing? Oh, gods. Firesong buried his
irritation at this particular complication in an already complicated
situation; after all, Need was right about her abilities. She did know
much older magics than anyone here, and that included An'desha. That
might be crucial at this point, for there could be something ancient and
long-forgotten that would give them all the clues they needed to solve
this situation. She was a powerful mage in her own right-something near
to an Adept, or she never could have made the magics that bound her
human soul to an iron blade. He, An'desha, and Sejanes were the only
true mages here; having Need with them gave them a fourth.

And if she is right, and the mage-storms overwhelm her along with the
rest of us, she won't have to worry about how she unravels. If she
dissolves into flame and melted steel, we here among all these dangerous
machines o power will have far more to worry about than her.

On the other hand, dealing with Need's irascible personality was not
going to be easy. He rubbed his temples, feeling another headache coming
on.

She Mindspeaks; perhaps I can get Tarm interested in her.

When he is not translating for us, wouldn't she be fascinating for a
historian?

He could only hope that was the case, because he had the feeling that
Need was not going to give him a choice about becoming her bearer. In
this all-male enclave, he was probably the closest she was going to come
to an acceptable bearer, for by now, even the female Companions they had
ridden here on had begun the long journey back to Valdemar.

"Well, we might as well get this over now," he said aloud, as Tarm
watched him with interest. "I assume, sir, that you have made the
acquaintance of my metal friend, here?" I have, and I hope she will
continue to impart her tales of the past to me here, when our work
permits," Tarm replied gravely, which made Firesong feel a little more
cheerful about the situation. At least he wouldn't be burdened with
Need's presence and personality all the time.

Well, most of my other colleagues here don't even know she exists, so
we'd better introduce her to them before she startles one of them into
dropping something critical by mindspeaking to him without warning."
Need remained silent after that little sally, which either meant that
she agreed with him, or that she was insulted and was plotting revenge.

An excellent plan," Tarm replied. "Carry on." He gathered them all
together by the simple expedient of going into the central chamber,
clearing his throat, and announcing," Excuse me, friends, but something
rather-unexpected has come up that you really ought to know about." That
certainly brought everyone who understood Valdemaran boiling out, and
the few Shin'a'in who didn't know the language followed the rest out of
sheer curiosity.

Silverfox was the first to arrive, and stared at him as if he'd grown a
tail. "Firesong," the kestra'chern began incredulously, "what are you
doing with a sword?" He removed Need from her sheath, just in case the
leather and silk hampered her ability to Mindspeak at all, and held her
out in front of him, balanced on his palms, as the others arrived.
"Well. that's what I wanted to tell you all about," he said, flushing a
little. "It seems we didn't get two additions to our little group here,
we got three. I'd like you all to meet Need, those of you who haven't
already encountered her."

"Need!" An'desha had only just emerged from the sleeping chamber, but
there was no doubt that he was glad to see the mage-blade. "What is she
doing here? This is wonderful!" Firesong's expression must have been a
bit sour, for An'desha took one look at his face and laughed. "Oh, it's
that way, is it? You're the chosen bearer?" He looked down fondly at the
blade. "Firesong is much too certain of his own expertise, dear lady; I
trust you can teach him that there are other people here who are just as
expert in their crafts as he. I warn you though, he looks much better
this way than in a dress." Don't be so hard on him, boy," the blade
replied, amused.

Leave that job to me. I've got more experience at it." By now all the
rest had gathered around, and were staring with varying degrees of
fascination and puzzlement at the sword. "What is this?" Sejanes asked,
brows knitted.

"Is this by any chance the famous sword called 'Need' that the ancestress
of Tale'sedrin Clan once wore?" asked Loisha, as the other Shin'a'in
gathered in a knot behind him, murmuring." The one carried by our
Clan-sib, Herald Kerowyn?"

"The same," Firesong all but groaned. "To answer you Sejanes, Need is a
magically-made sword with the soul of its maker bound into it, and she
is unbelievably ancient. Either she or Tarm can probably tell you the
story of why she did such a daft thing-" Hardly daft. Reckless, yes, and
probably less than wise, but at the time we didn't have many options,
and all of those were worse than what I did. Of course, I could have
just folded my hands and done nothing at all, but-let's just say that
went against my conscience and my nature." Those who didn't know what
she was went wide-eyed with startlement at the sound of her projected
mind-voice.

"The point is, she's from a time that actually predates the Mage Wars
and the Cataclysm, at least so far as we can tell and that makes her an
expert in magics much older than the ones we know," Firesong said,
noting as he spoke that An'desha' s eyes were unfocused, which probably
meant he was talking privately to her. "She has volunteered to come help
us, since her last bearer no longer requires her tutelage." Master Levy
rubbed his chin with one hand as he looked down on the sword with
speculation. "What happens if and when the mage-storms overwhelm us
here?" he asked. "If she is magically made-" Then unless I can manage to
shield myself, which I'm not certain I can, I either go quietly or
dramatically, and I don't know which it will be," Need replied bluntly.
"These Storms disrupt the patterns of magic so deeply they may as well
be spells of Unmaking. But that would happen whether I was here or
somewhere else, and I'd just as soon be trying to accomplish something.
I told you, I'm not one to sit with folded hands, even if I still had
hands to fold."

"Wait a minute," Sejanes objected, speaking directly to the sword,
glimmering with reflected light from above. "If you predate the Mage
Wars and the Cataclysm, how did you survive them?" In a shielded casket
in a shielded shrine in the heart of the triply-shielded Temple to
Bestet, the Battle- Goddess," she replied promptly…And when the
Cataclysm was over, the shields on the shrine and the casket were gone
and I felt as if I'd been drained to the dregs. It took me years to
recover, and by then I'd been moved to the armory since no one could
figure out why I'd been put in with the Goddess' regalia in the first
place. If I were inclined to such things, I'd have been indignant."
Sejanes nodded. "It would be difficult to find such a situation again,"
he observed, stroking his chin with one hand. "Indeed, it is quite
surprising that you were in that situation during the first Cataclysm."
The only reason they had shields like that was because Of the war with
Ma'ar. I don't know of any Temples now with that kind of protection,"
Need went on. "Or to be more honest, I don't know of any that would
offer me shelter. I might as well be doing something useful, and I just
might be able to save myself while doing it."

"Do you fear death so much?" Karal asked softly. Light rippled across
the surface of the sword, as if Need reacted to that question.

Firesong expected a sarcastic reply, or none at all, but was surprised
by both her answer and her sober tone.

"I don't fear death, youngling," she said, with great honesty.

What I'm afraid of is more complicated than that. I don't want to vanish
without fighting, I don't intend to just lie down and accept "death"
passively. There is the possibility that I could meet my end violently,
and if that is the case-"

"Then it would be better here," Sejanes said
with finality, as a chill crept up Firesong's spine. "If there is a
second Cataclysm and the effect penetrates this place, your demise will
be insignificant compared to the violence that will be unleashed."

Light rippled along the surface of the blade again. "Good.

You'd already considered that." Need sounded relieved. "I'd hoped I
wouldn't be the bird of ill omen forced to point that out to you." I
would rather hope we can pull this off right to the very end, thank you."

"No, just the one who forced us to think about it a little earlier than
we wanted to," Firesong sighed.

Now she gave him one of her typical sardonic chuckles. "Consider it incentive to find a solution," she told him.

Now, of course, those who had never met Need wanted to speak with her;
Firesong handed her over to An'desha for that, although he was quite
aware that she was not going to change her mind about her choice of a
bearer. Somewhat to his surprise, Karal separated himself from the group for a moment and approached him.

"I'm not quite sure what to say, except that I know it isn't going to be
easy or very entertaining to have Need literally on your back while we
work our way through all this," Karal said quietly. "I've had teachers
like her. They were very good, but not easy to live with, and you have
my sympathy, for what it's worth."

"Thank you, Karal," he replied with some surprise. The last thing he had expected was sympathy or understanding from the Karsite!

"Just trying to--oh, I don't know." Karal smiled crookedly.

"Believe it or not, I like and admire you, Firesong. We irritate each
other sometimes, but who doesn't? And I never properly thanked you for
what you did for me." Firesong found himself blushing hotly, something
he hadn't done since boyhood. "Oh, please," he replied, for once at a
loss for words. "Don't thank me, we all-" Karal shook his head. "I know
very well what all of you did, and I won't mention this again since it
obviously makes you uncomfortable. I just want you to know that it's
appreciated and you are appreciated. And-well, I think I've said
enough." Considering that Firesong didn't think held be able to flush
any hotter, Karal was probably right. When the Karsite rejoined the
group talking to Need, it was a decided relief.

"Ahem." This time the mind-voice was Tarm's, and Firesong was very glad
to hear it.

"Can I help you, sir?" he asked, looking down at the kyree, who was in
turn looking up at him with amused golden eyes.

The white hairs of his muzzle contrasted strangely with the youth in
those eyes.

Since virtually everyone else is involved with speaking to our metallic
friend, why don't we go have a look at those notes Silverfox says you
are so concerned with? If this device is what I believe it to be, then
the translation will be a simple one, and we may have some answers
within a quarter-day."

"Really?" Firesong's eyebrows rose.

"Mind you, this is likely to be the only case where the translation will be so easy," Tarm cautioned, "And that is only because I am familiar with similar devices used by our gryphons. I think this is probably an improvement on those devices, allowing visions as well as thoughts and-" He stopped, and shook his head until his ears flapped... -and we really ought to just see for ourselves before I make too big a liar of myself. Shall we?" Firesong got the notes and spread the pages out on the floor in one corner of the main chamber. He and the kyree bent over them in intense concentration, with Lyam taking notes beside them, and before very long, Tarm was able to determine that the device was nothing more than an improvement on something he called a "teleson." At that point, Silverfox joined them again, and by the time supper came and went, they had worked out not only the way to activate the devices, but also how to make more.

Provided, of course, that there were sufficient parts to do so. There
were some esoteric components that needed to be prepared beforehand, and
Firesong wasn't certain whether or not there had been any of those
components among the parts in bins on the workbench. Both Tarm and
Silverfox were of the opinion that, although the Kaled'a'in could
probably make more of these components eventually, it would take a great
deal of trial-and-error to do so, given the vagaries of the way the
language had changed over the centuries.

"Well, let's confine ourselves to activating the two we have," Firesong
said at last, sitting back on his heels and stretching muscles that had
cramped in his shoulders and back. "If they work, then we can see if we
can make a third and get it to work. With communication open back to
Haven, that will give us more than we'd hoped for; open it to Sunhame,
and we're doubly advantaged. We can worry about being able to build more of these devices from scratch later, when we have the leisure."

"That seems a good plan to me," Silverfox concurred, rotating his head
and neck to stretch out cramps of his own. "Let me go and get one of the
devices and bring it up here, and that way we can actually test it over
a little distance." He looked around. "We'll need someone with
Mindspeech up here. That would be Tarm, I suppose." That seems
reasonable," the kyree said agreeably. "We will also need a
mage-Sejanes, perhaps-to activate it."

"And I'll go down to the workshop and activate and man the other device
down there," Firesong said, getting to his feet. He and Silverfox
descended the stairs down into the workshop; Silverfox took one of the
two devices from the bench and carried it carefully up the staircase
again.

The instructions for activation had been quite unambiguous and equally
simple, phrased in language that not even the passage of time had
altered. Even a child, had he both true magic and Mindspeech, would have
been able to follow the instructions. It was obvious from the notes now
that the reason these devices had not been put into use by Urtho was
that anyone could "eavesdrop" on conversations held with their aid. That
rather negated their value in a time of war. Urtho's notes had made it
very clear that Ma'ar had many folks Gifted with Mindspeech in his ranks,
and that he used it as he would any other tool.

Firesong only hoped that communications sent through these telesons
would not be forced into the minds of those with Mindspeech; if that
were to be the case, their use would be severely limited. Having to
maintain ordinary shields was one thing; having to put up. shields
against something like coercion in order to block these communications
out would be very uncomfortable. And for those who were untrained and
unaware of their Gift, it would be impossible.

I don't want to drive people mad by having them suddenly forced to
listen to strangers talking in their heads!

Well, there was only one way to find out for certain.

A very little magic was needed to help activate the device, and none to
maintain it once it was active. There was nothing for mage-storms to
disrupt; the device took Mindspeech and amplified it, using some
resonance of an arrangement of crystals.

The trick was, even those who normally would not be considered to have
Mindspeech would be able to use it also; it only needed one so Gifted on
one of the two telesons in order for the trick to work.

That would mean that Master Levy could talk with one of his fellow
Artificers through the intermediary of a Herald, or a mage so Gifted
could speak with Sejanes, who was not.

Hmm. And if the device isn't urgently needed, young Karal can talk with
Natoli. The idea delighted him; now and again he had the urge to
matchmake, and this was one of those times. It might be the strangest
courtship ever on record, but if it worked-Worry about that when you can
get this ancient construction to operate! he scolded himself, and bent
his concentration to doing just that.

A moment later-well, it seemed to be working. So far as he recalled the
notes, it looked as if he had activated it. But: FIRESONG?" If it had
been a real voice and not a mindvoice, the shout would have deafened
him. As it was, it was excruciatingly painful!

"Aiii!" he shouted, clapping his hands over his ears, even though he
knew that wasn't going to make a difference.

"Sorry." That was a more normal "volume," although there was no sound
involved. "Is that better?" He didn't recognize the mind-voice; it
certainly wasn't Tarm. It also "sounded" rather odd, and he couldn't
tell why.

"Who is this?" he sent back cautiously, so as not to blast their minds.

"Sejanes. I must say, this is an interesting way to speak." Firesong
blinked for a moment, both to clear his thoughts and to try to pinpoint
just why the mind-voice felt so strange. The mental images-Wait, that's
it. There are no mental images! There's no emotional flavor, no images,
no leaking over of other thoughts! This is just like speaking, not like
Mindspeech at all." And that, for those who were not Gifted and not used
to sorting through the wealth of additional information that came along
with Mindsent "words," would be a good thing. "I believe we have a
workable Pair of prototypes," he sent back with glee.

His elation was matched by the others. After making certain that both
devices were working according to the notes, and that all of the
components were well-seated, the consensus was that they had earned a
real respite.

But before they took that well-earned rest, everyone, Gifted and not,
had a try at the teleson pair. The notes were correct; so long as one of
the operators was Gifted, the result was the same, crisp, clear
Mindspeech with no overtones of anything else. If both were Gifted, then
the results were different; precisely like "normal" mindspeech. To
Firesong's relief, there was no "spillover" from the devices to those
who were Gifted, although, as Urtho had indicated, the Gifted could
"listen in" with perfect case when the devices were in use.

Right now, that might be an advantage. It certainly wouldn't hurt to
have more than two people at each Mindsent conference.

Altra had recovered enough from his last jumps to take the device to
Valdemar immediately, and insisted on doing just that, then and there.
He saw no reason whatsoever to delay, and every reason to make all
speed.

"With every mark that passes, it is more difficult to jump," he said
firmly. Why wait? It will be easier to jump with an inanimate object,
but "easier" does not mean "easy." I want to get this over with!" There
were no dissenting voices, so as soon as the mindmirror teleson had been
wrapped in a cushion of quilts to keep it from any possibility of
damage, Altra left, saying that he thought he would return in four days.

"We'll know if the device still works or if it works at the distances
that Urtho claimed in two days, of course," Sejanes observed as they all
prepared for sleep. Not that any of them really thought he would get
much sleep after all the excitement that day. "In two days he'll be in
Haven, and then it will just be a matter of getting one of the Heralds
to try calling US.// He crept into his own bed-the only one that was a
bed, since it was not possible for him to get into and out of a pallet
on the floor.

"Or one of us can call them," Karal pointed out, and yawned. He was
already in his bedroll, with Florian curled up at his back, taking the
place of Altra as a living bedwarmer.

"You know, I was really excited a couple of marks ago and I thought I'd
never be able to get to sleep, but now-" He yawned again, and looked
puzzled. "-now it seems as if this is an anticlimax." Firesong had the
answer to his puzzlement. "Well, we're all worn out-it's been a very
busy day-but there's more to it than that." He tied up his long hair to
keep it from knotting up while he slept.

"Permit the old pessimist," Need interjected. "It's not an anticlimax,
child, it's that this hasn't been the climax you think it should be. We
have a new tool, and nothing more. If those devices hadn't worked, we
would have gone on without them. We will find the answers here, if there
are answers to be found, but the teleson is not one of those answers,
and that is why it feels as if what we accomplished with them is only a
minor addition to our work and not a major part of it."

"Ah." Karal's face wore a sober expression of understanding." I see what
you are saying. We're not at the end of our work, just the beginning,
and it's not even close to the point where we can celebrate. Well.
That's a little disappointing, but at least we haven't fallen back."

"Exactly," said Firesong. "Which is all the more reason why you should
get a good night's sleep. We'll need everyone in the morning." He
leveled a sober look at Karal. "Especially you. I think we'll have work
enough to make you and Lyam wish there were four of you."

"I'll be glad to get back to work," Karal said, with a weak smile, and
on that note, Firesong extinguished the lights with a word, and it was
not long before even he was fast asleep.

What is the Shin'a'in saying? Darkwind asked himself, as he watched Duke Tremane trying to make out careful plans for the time when the mage-storms finally overcame the latest efforts to stave them off. Ah, I remember. "The best plans never survive the first engagement with the enemy." How has the Empire done so well when they insist on having detailed plans for everything?

The three of them sat around a small table in the Grand Duke's personal
quarters, a table currently quite full, what with papers, glasses of
water, and maps strewn across it.

"What do you two think?" Duke Tremane asked, setting aside the plans he
and the Valdemarans had been discussing and leaning over the table. As
he looked up at them, his gray-brown eyes seemed anxious. "My scholars
haven't been able to unearth any more information about the Cataclysm,
and my mages have not been able to predict anything that these
mage-storms have done." Elspeth grimaced.

"I don't know that much either, I'm afraid," she replied honestly. She glanced over at Darkwind, who shrugged slightly. "I can only tell you of the effects the Cataclysm had, according to our records and traditions," he told the Grand Duke. "Those effects were widespread and all-encompassing. All magic was disrupted, from the Ice-Wall Mountains in the north to the borders of the Haighlei Empire in the south, and in an equal distance east, and west of what are now Lake Evendim and the Dhorisha Plains. If any shields survived the Cataclysm, I am not aware of it, but I must add that the Kaled'a'in my people are descended from had none of the greater mages with them."

"So shields might survive?" Tremane persisted, fiddling nervously with a pen. Oh, how he wants to have some way to get his sort of magic back!
Now that this area of Hardorn was buffered from the worst effects of the mage-storms, Tremane had given orders for some judicious use of magic to take some pressure from scarce resources-mostly burnables. The barracks and headquarters were all heated and lit with mage-fires and mage-lights now, and about half the time food was cooked using mage-fires in the stoves. It did make things more comfortable, especially in the barracks, which had been heated with dried dung, and were hardly illuminated at all. But Darkwind and Elspeth could both tell how much the Grand Duke wanted to be able to use magic for all of the things he was used to; the only trouble with that idea was that it just wasn't possible to do so. For one thing, magical energy ran thin and low here; Ancar had depleted it sorely, and it would take a long time to recover. There was enough for lights and fires-but not for something more complicated, such as blind scrying, or creating mage-walls to keep the "boggles" out. For another, Hardorn was only buffered; there were still slight effects, and those were increasing, a little at a time, with every passing day.

Darkwind spread his hands wide, shaking his long, silver streaked hair
back over his shoulders as he did so. "That, I cannot tell you. The
people to ask would be the k'leshya, and they are somewhat difficult to
reach at the moment." He caught Elspeth's face taking on that slightly
vacant look that meant she was Mindspeaking to Gwena, and he waited for
her to say something. Tremane was always forgetting that Gwena was
"present" in spirit, if not sitting at the same table, and the Companion would hardly forgo a chance to remind him.

"Gwena says that she can relay an inquiry to Skif's Cymry at Leshya
Vale, and get the answer back in a couple of days," Elspeth said, her
dark eyes crinkling at the corners, telling Darkwind that she was
holding back laughter. Gwena had probably said far more than that,
probably about Tremane and his faulty memory but this was a diplomatic
mission and such things would not be diplomatic to relate. "There are
enough mages there that surely someone will know the answer.

And she says if not, then she can relay on to Florian at the Tower and
see if An'desha knows anything." Not every Companion had that
long-distance capability; in fact, there were only two in all of the
world as far as Darkwind knew. One was Gwena, and the other was Rolan,
the Companion of the Queen's Own. They were special; Grove-born ' the
Heralds called it, and claimed that instead of being physically brought
into being in the normal way, they simply appeared, full-grown, out of a grove in the middle of Companion's Field. They had unusually powerful
abilities in mind-magic, and through most of the history of Valdemar
there had never been more than one Grove-born Companion at once. But
then again, this was, by all accounts both sacred and secular, a crucial point in the history~ not only of Valdemar, but of this entire part of the world, and if ever there was the need for a second Grove-born Companion, this was the time. Tremane chewed on his lip, and ran a hand over the top of his balding head. "You know," he said cautiously. "The fact that those weapons they are looking at in the Tower survived at all might indicate that some shields held, wouldn't it?

Surely there were very powerful shields on that Tower at the time of the Cataclysm."

"And it might only indicate that things at the heart of the Cataclysm
had some natural protection, like things in the eye of a whirlwind,"
Elspeth reminded him, twisting a silver threaded chestnut curl around one finger. "I wouldn't count on that. I also wouldn't count on any of us, singly or together, being able to replicate shields created by the mages who lived back then. These were people capable of creating living
beings -gryphons, basilisks, wyrsa-and I don't know of anyone living now who would even attempt such a thing." Darkwind cleared his throat softly to regain their attention.

"To get back to your question about the effects of the original
Cataclysm-afterward, the natural flows of magic energy in those areas
changed completely, and we can only assume that the same thing will
happen again. And as for the physical world-well, we Hawkbrothers are
still healing the damage that was created in the wake of the original
Storms. If you think the monsters that you've seen so far are bad, wait
until there are hundreds, thousands of them, when the number of warped
and changed creatures equals or exceeds the number of normal creatures."
He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment as he made some quick
calculations. "To give you an idea, it has taken us something like two
thousand years to clear an area approximately half the size of your
Empire of dangerous creatures and even more dangerous magic." Tremane
brooded over his stack of paper for a moment. "So your suggestion would
be...?" Elspeth and Darkwind exchanged another look, and it was
Darkwind who replied. "If our group at the Tower can't do anything-warn
everyone you can reach, create what shields and shelters you can, assume that they won't hold, and endure.

Make your plans after you see what the effects are this time." The Duke
made a sour face, but did not respond. Elspeth tried some sympathy.

"Duke Tremane, I know this is difficult for you, but at least you are in command of an area in which much of the magical energy has been drained away, and which never relied on magic to get things done in the first place," she pointed out.

"You can count on most buildings staying up, most bridges standing firm, count on fires heating your barracks as they always have, candles
lighting the darkness, and food cooking properly in a well-made oven.
Hardorn is prepared for everything except what the final Storm will do
to the physical world-and in a way, you can even prepare for that,
simply by knowing what the last Cataclysm did." Tremane sighed, and
rubbed one temple with his fingers.

"Yes, I know this, and I also know that this is not going to be the case in the Empire. Things were falling to pieces so badly that when I
mounted my raid on that Imperial warehouse complex, the men there hadn't heard from their superiors in weeks, and now-I can't even imagine the state of chaos the Empire must be in. It's just that things were difficult for us before, and the one comfort I had was that I couldn't envision them getting any worse. Now I have to, and plan for it, somehow." Elspeth shook her head emphatically. "You can't plan for this, Tremane. All you can do is to warn people of what they might expect, and put things in place that will give you information once the worst happens. The signal-towers, for one thing. They work almost as well as Companions, and you ought to make it a priority to get them manned by people who know how to use them. You ought to make it a priority to get more of them in place if it is at all possible! If every little village had a tower, the way every village has access to a Herald, you'd be able to get help to people long before a messenger could have reached you."
Darkwind nodded. "Don't plan for specific events; doing that will
inevitably prove to be an exercise in futility."

"Plan for flexibility, you mean?" The Duke considered that for a moment, and nodded. "All right, I can see that." Then he sighed. "And plan for communication, put ways of bringing in information in place while we still can. That's good, as long as the trouble spots are places where there are still people living. But if they aren't, there could be a nest of something brewing, some monstrous creatures, say, and we wouldn't know about it until the creatures had wiped out an entire town. Maybe not even then." He rubbed his forehead, and Darkwind saw the shadow of physical pain in his eyes, in the tense muscles of his homely face. "I just wish there was a way to watch the land," he said fretfully. "I used to be able to get my mages to scry entire stretches of countryside, and that's what I'd give my arm
to have working again."

Darkwind exchanged another look with Elspeth. "What do you think? This is the best opening he's ever given us." If we can make him believe in earth-sense," she replied, with some pessimism. "Still, you're right. It isn't just the best opening, it's the only opening he's ever given us." You, or me?" he asked.

"Me first, just to open the subject. I'm the local royalty, the local
Herald, and the local expert in mind-magic. I could be expected to know
about these things, and know if the Hardornens were just making
something up. You pick up if you see an opening to insert something you
know." He folded his hands on the table in front of him as she cleared
her throat. "Duke Tremane," she said, I may have a solution to that
particular problem, and oddly enough it is a part of a proposition that
the Hardornens outside your domain wanted me to make to you on their
behalf." She smiled apologetically. "I think you probably were
anticipating that the loyalists might ask us to serve as their envoys as well as envoys for the Alliance. We promised we would put their proposal before you at an opportune time, but we promised nothing else; that seemed harmless enough."

He looked up sharply, and a little suspiciously. "A proposition? What sort of proposition?" Elspeth bit her lip and looked down at her strong, well-muscled hands for a moment. They were hardly the hands of a pampered princess, and Darkwind had a suspicion that Tremane had noticed this. "Well... it's a rather interesting one. It seems that they've been watching how you manage things here, and you've frankly impressed them. There seems to be a general consensus that under certain very specific circumstances, they would not only be happy to arrange a truce with you, but they would be willing to offer you the crown of Hardorn itself." He looked as if she had hit him in the back of the head with a board. It was the first time he had ever actually shown surprise.

"The crown? They'd make me their King? What about their own claimants?"

"There aren't any," Darkwind said crisply. "Ancar was very thorough when it came to eliminating rivals. We were told that there weren't even any claimants on the distaff side; apparently he didn't in the least see any reason to exclude his female relatives from the purges, nor children, nor even infants. From all anyone can tell, he went back to the fourth and fifth remove of the cousins. By the time he was finished, well, you have as much right to the throne as any of the natives, that's how thin the royal connections are. We learned most of that when we were here last, but I don't think it would be politic to mention that little trip."

Tremane didn't exactly pale, but he did look a little shocked. "And I thought that politics in the Empire were cutthroat, he murmured, as if to himself. Then he blinked, and collected himself. "So, just what are these specific circumstances you were talking about? And how will all this give me intelligence about what is happening to the land?" Elspeth toyed with her glass of water. "This is where I am going to have to ask you to stretch your imagination a bit. Magic exists, Tremane," she replied. "You know that mind now that you've seen the members of our party use it." He nodded cautiously. "You also have your own Healers who use Healing magic, which is similar to, but not identical with, mind-magic," she continued, "And you know that neither are affected by the mage-storms which are disrupting what we in Valdemar call true-magic."

"I'm following you so far," Tremane said with a nod.

"Well, as near as we can tell, there is another form of magic which is like mind-magic and like Healing-magic, but isn't exactly either of them," she told him, leaning forward earnestly. "It's called earth-magic, and it seems to have entirely to do with the land, the health of the land, and restoring that health. We think that's what hedge-wizards and earth-witches use, rather than true-magic; people who are trained in those disciplines-so they tell me-also refer to their power as earth-magic, and they call what you and Darkwind and I are accustomed to using by the name of high-magic."

Right. So you tell him about Hawkbrother Healing Adepts while I figure out how to segue this into the earth-binding ritual." Darkwind nodded very slightly and caught up the conversational ball. "We Tayledras have specialized Adepts called Healing Adepts who have the ability to sense the poisoned places, the places where magic has made things go wrong, and fix them again," he told Tremane, who was sitting back in his chair with an odd expression that Darkwind could not read.

"And if you need evidence of how well this works, it is in the fact that we have restored so much of the land to the precataclysm days. The
special ability that makes this possible Elspeth's people would call it a Gift-is something we all call the earth-sense."

"It's not just Tayledras Healing Adepts and earth-witches that use this. Both the King of Rethwellan and my stepfather Prince Daren have
earth-sense, in fact, she said, taking the narrative back. "It seems
that the Gift has always been in the Rethwellan royal line. They haven't needed it for generations, but it's obvious how useful it is when you know that even though Daren was not familiar with Hardorn and not ritually tied to the land here, he could still sense what Ancar had done to it when he came here to help Valdemar drive Ancar out.

That actually proved to be of tactical value, since it gave us an idea
of where Ancar was finding all the power he needed." Tremane nodded, his brows knitted intently, and seized on the phrase that they had both
hoped he would. "Ritually tied to the land?" he asked. "Just what does
that mean?"

"The monarchs of Rethwellan-and I presume, of Hardornhave always taken
part in a very old ritual known as earth-binding," she told him.
"Because we in Valdemar do not have that particular ritual, I can't even begin to tell you how it works, or why, but when it is over, every major injury or change to the land is instantly sensed by the monarch. Ancar obviously never participated in that ritual, or he could not have done the things he did-I suspect that, as in Rethwellan, the earth-binding is part of the Hardornen private rites that take place just before the public coronation. Ancar crowned himself, without the usual rituals, so-" She shrugged. "My stepfather says that those who even have earth-sense latently can have it aroused by such a rite."

"The point here is that the people of Hardorn have found some of the
priests of the old ways who know that ritual," Darkwind continued, as
she glanced at him to cue him to take up the narrative. "They think that if you were to-he -tested for earth-sense and had it even latently, that would qualify you for the Hardornen crown. And if you were to undergo the earth-binding ritual, thus awakening the earth-sense and binding you to Hardorn, you would be a-a safe monarch for Hardorn, because you would be unable to harm, abuse, or misuse your land the way Ancar did."

"Because harming the land would hurt me." He lifted one eyebrow
skeptically.

Is he going to laugh?" Elspeth sounded dubious, and Darkwind didn't
blame her. This was such a primitive, unsophisticated concept-for
someone from the Eastern Empire, so sophisticated in the ways of magic
that its power was used for practically everything, this must seem
incredibly savage and crude.

But he didn't laugh, and in fact, he seemed to be thinking the concept
over. "Can you tell me anything else about this earth-sense? just what
does it entail? How do you learn to use it.

"Among my people, it isn't very complicated," Darkwind told him. "You
don't so much learn to use it as you learn to keep it from using you.
It's rather like Empathy in a way, or extremely strong Mindspeech. You
actually learn how to shut it out so that it doesn't affect you all the
time."

"Interesting. I can see how it would be inconvenient to be affected
adversely by the very condition you are attempting to remedy." His brows creased in thought. "And does it go the other way? Does the physical condition of the King affect the land?"

"Havens, no!" Elspeth exclaimed. "For one thing, the King is not exactly as-as monumental as a country! It would be like a flea stepping on a horse. For another, it's only a sense, like the sense of smell, and... She trailed off in confusion as Darkwind shook his head.

"I hate to have to contradict Elspeth, but that's not entirely true,
Duke Tremane," he said, feeling the need to be totally frank. "Under
certain very specific circumstances, the health of the King who is bound to the land can affect the land. He can, in fact, sacrifice himself-give up his own life-to restore the land to its former health. This is something that my people know, and that the Shin'a'in not only know, but have even, very rarely, practiced. I must also say, however, that I personally do not believe that the Hardornens ever practiced that form of earth-binding. As with all crafts, there are scores, even hundreds or thousands of ways to do them, and nothing that they told us gave me any indication that they even know such a possibility exists. And I must also point out that to be valid, to have any chance of working, the sacrifice must be a self-sacrifice, entirely voluntary~ and indeed eagerly sought by the sacrificial victim." He managed a thin smile. "Hauling one's King to the stone of sacrifice and spilling his blood upon the ground only serves as a sort of gruesome fertilizer to the local grass; it won't change anything else without that will to be
sacrificed." Tremane's brows crept halfway up his forehead as Darkwind
imparted that choice bit of information, but he made no comment. After a moment, he stood up.

"Id like to go think about this for a little," he said. "I assume you
have a way of contacting someone if I make a decision?" I can find a
contact," Gwena said firmly in both their minds.

"We do," Elspeth told him.

"Then give me-about a mark," he replied. "I'll send for you, if you have no objections." Since it had been a very long time since breakfast, and this would provide an excellent excuse to send their Imperial aide in search of food, Darkwind had no objections whatsoever, and neither did Elspeth. With a polite exchange of bows, they retired to their own quarters, leaving him sitting back in his chair, staring at the ducal ring on his finger, clearly deep in thought.

They were about halfway through a solid, if uninspired meal of bread and cold sliced meat and pickles, when Gwena announced that she had found the contact she had promised.

"Go to the Hanging Goose Tavern after dark," she told Darkwind. : It
will have to be you, since I don't think that Elspeth would be welcome
in this particular tavern, and if there are two of you, he might suspect a trap." Elspeth exchanged a wry glance with Darkwind and shrugged, applying herself to her food. You want to speak to the bartender who dispenses the beer, not the one who handles the harder drinks," she continued. You tell him, "I drink my beer very cold." He is supposed to reply, "That's an odd habit," and you say, "I picked it up in the West." He'll nod and ask you what your message is. He has a perfect memory, he'll pass it on word for word. If Tremane decides to take the gamble, I suspect you'll have your delegation, priest included, within a few days. Maybe sooner. They might have moved someone into a village nearby, hoping you would be able to offer him the proposition soon after we arrived."

"I rather suspected that the loyalists had agents in the city," Elspeth
said, as she ate the last bite. "I couldn't imagine how they knew so
much about him just from hearing things." But this sounds as if the
network has been well in place for some time. It takes a long time to
find someone with a perfect memory who is trustworthy enough to act as a message drop. It makes me wonder if this tavern wasn't a contact point for... other things." She smiled suggestively at Darkwind.

He chuckled. "I am just a poor Hawkbrother scout with no knowledge of you city dwellers and your ways," he protested.

"What other things?"

"Smuggling, maybe. Possibly intriguing against Ancar. And I'll bet the
reason Gwena doesn't want me to go there is not because I wouldn't be
welcome alone there either." She grinned at something Gwena said only to her. "I thought so." She reached out and patted Darkwind's hand. "The ladies working in this tavern will be selling more than just strong drink and food, my poor, uncivilized Hawkbrother. I suggest that you make it very clear to them that you aren't interested in their wares, or you might bring something inconvenient and uncomfortable home with you that would require a Healer's help to clear up." He grinned back at her, and was trying to think of a clever retort when Tremane's aide came to fetch them.

The Grand Duke was waiting for them when they arrived, looking no
different than when they had left him. They took their seats and waited
for him to speak.

"Frankly, I am not entirely convinced that this earth-sense you told me
about really exists," he said after a moment. "And I honestly do not think, if it exists, that I happen to have it. It just seems all too very pat and too coincidental that out of all the people who might have been sent here, I would happen to have this sense which is needed at this particular time." He frowned a little. "It's rather too much like something a tale-seller might make up."

"Possibly," Darkwind replied. "But you might consider it before you
dismiss this proposition out-of-hand. If you take as your premise that
earth-sense does exist, and that the extreme form of it could only be
...  induced, let us say  ...  by this ritual, then the lesser, or
latent forms would be very useful to anyone who was in a position to
rule even a small area. Having such a thing could explain why some
landowners are more successful at managing their property than
others-why some landowners have an uncanny ability to gauge what is
going on with their property and people, and why some have remarkable
hunches that always prove correct."

"I can see that," Tremane acknowledged.

"So, given that, it is logical to assume that those landowners whose
lines were so Gifted would be more prosperous than others would accumulate more property, and would eventually rise to higher and higher positions of power over the many generations," Darkwind persisted. "And in short, it would actually be logical to assume that a man who had been a ruler of property or even a King would be so Gifted, because his predecessors could not have prospered so well without it."

Tremane laughed out loud; it was the first time that Darkwind had ever
heard him laugh, and he liked the sound of it. He often judged aspects
of peoples' character by their laughter; Tremane's laugh was open,
generous, and not at all self-conscious.

"I think that if you had not been born among the Hawkbrothers, you would have become a diplomat, a courtier, or a priest, Master Darkwind," he said finally. "You certainly can turn a fine argument. Now, hear me out, if you please."

Darkwind and Elspeth both nodded, and Tremane set forth his own
reasoning.

"You must know, and they must know, that with or without this earth-sense, if my men and I can recreate order here-as we already have done, you might note-people will come to my banner without the title attached to it. That is the great secret of Imperial success. We wait until a land is disorganized and demoralized, and then we move in, offering peace, order, and prosperity. Usually people welcome us. Then, when they see the high level that Imperial prosperity represents, word spreads, and the lands we move on generally are half-conquered before the Army itself ever reaches them."

"That makes rather too much sense," Elspeth put in dryly.

He nodded his acknowledgment and continued, tapping his index finger on
the table to emphasize each point. "You must make it very clear to these people that no matter what happens, I intend to go on holding this particular piece of Hardorn from now on, for myself, my men, and those Hardornens who have accepted my rule and my order without any of this earthbinding business."

"I think they are already well aware of that, Tremane," she answered
just as frankly. "But I will make sure that arrangement is openly
acknowledged on both sides. To be honest with you, there is no way that
you can be dislodged with the few resources these Hardornen loyalists
have at their command. That would take an army. The only armies large
enough are those commanded by the Allies, and we are here representing
the Allies in a gesture of peace and goodwill, so I don't think you need concern yourself about losing your hold on this place."

"Good. just so that we're all clear on that." He toyed with a corner of
a piece of paper for a moment. "I can't say that I really care for the
idea of subjecting myself to this ritual. It all sounds terribly
primitive, somehow. But perhaps even if I don't believe I have this
so-called earth-sense, the priest will be convinced that I do, and will
let me go through with this ritual even if it is meaningless. Frankly,
if that happens, it would be the easiest and quickest way to get all of
Hardorn under my wing, and it would be done with absolutely no
bloodshed." He smiled; an oddly shy smile, and Darkwind had the feeling
that it was a rare smile, as if Tremane had even less to smile about
than to laugh about. "How could I possibly turn away that kind of
opportunity?"

"In your position, I certainly would not," Darkwind told him.

"Well, is that the whole of your message?"

Tremane nodded. "And if you'll excuse me, I have matters regarding my
men to see to. My aide can escort you back to your quarters, and if
there is anywhere in the city you need to go, he can give you the proper directions."

That won't be necessary," Gwena said.

"Thank you," Darkwind replied, without giving any indication that he
would take Tremane up on his offer.

Once again, after a polite exchange of bows, they departed for their own quarters. Elspeth had a thoughtful look on her face, but waited until they were alone again before saying anything.

She stood with her back to the cast-iron-and-brick stove holding the
mage-fire, warming herself at it. A real fire also burned on the hearth, and between the two, their rooms were as comfortable as any in Valdemar. But the hallways of this fortified manor were still cold, despite the addition of such stoves, and they both tended to get chilled going from their quarters to Tremane's.

There was no doubt that this was one of the worst winters that Hardorn
had ever experienced, even without the effect of the magestorms. The main difference in the weather now that the mage-storms had abated,
according to their aide, was that now there were only snowstorms, not
killing blizzards, every two weeks or so. With the incredible blanket of snow covering the ground, the sun couldn't even begin to melt it before another layer fell.

The modified Heralds' Whites that the hertasi had designed for her
seemed particularly well-suited to the icy landscape outside. He
wondered what the Imperial soldiers thought when they saw her; did they
believe that her costume was meant to reflect the season, as Tayledras
scout gear did?

"You know," Elspeth said finally, in Tayledras. "This situation has some interesting parallels in the history of Valdemar the Founding,
specifically."

"Oh?" Darkwind joined her, hands outstretched to the warm stove, wishing that there was something like a Hawkbrother hot spring or soaking pool about. It never seemed possible to be entirely warm except in bed. He responded in the same language. "I wasn't aware of that."

"Well, Valdemar was fleeing the Empire rather than serving it when he
and his followers trekked out in this direction, but when he got to the
point where Haven is now and started building, he actually built beside
an existing village," Elspeth replied, turning to face the stove and
rubbing her hands together." The locals there were not entirely thrilled with having a foreign power moving in, although they never actually opposed him. But once they saw the advantages of coming under his protection-and the way in which his own followers were treated-they
began to act the way the Hardornens are with Tremane. And eventually, of course, they insisted that he call himself a King." She chuckled. "That was really rather funny; it seemed that every little petty ruler for leagues in every direction was calling himself a King, and his own
people were embarrassed to be led by a mere Baron. They had a crown made up, called in a priest to concoct a ceremony, and had him crowned before he had a chance to object. I gather that he was rather startled by it all." Darkwind laughed. "That may be the first time I've ever heard of someone being tricked into becoming a King," he responded." But you're right, I do see the parallels there." She stared at the stove, frowning. "I think we can assume that Tremane is going to be offered the Crown, no matter what."

"I think that is a foregone conclusion, yes, lover"" Dark wind
admitted. "Even if he doesn't have earth-sense, the priest may perform
the binding anyway, just to make him eligible. I think he was right about that."

She sighed and nodded. "The next question may be how we arrange for
there to be the same checks on the King of Hardorn that there are on the Son of the Sun, the King of Rethwellan, and the Queen of Valdemar.
Solaris has to answer to Vkandis, Faram has both the earth-binding and
his family's sword to contend with, and Selenay has her Companion." She
chewed her lip. "Then again-we may already have those checks partially
in place. Solaris did curse him with speaking only the truth, after
all."

"Yes, but not the whole truth," he reminded her. "There are ways of
lying simply by not telling all of the truth." She grimaced, and turned
away from the warmth to pace the room as she often did when she was
thinking. "You may think I'm going mad, but I'm beginning to agree with
young Karal; I think this man has a basically good nature. That entire
interview about the assassins when we first arrived  ..."

Darkwind nodded, for he had come away with the same impression out of
that interview; that Tremane was a man who would bear the dreadful
burden of indirectly ordering the deaths of innocent people, and he
would feel guilt about that for the rest of his life. Real guilt, not
feigned. And it didn't matter that he had good reason at the time for
his actions; what mattered was that he himself had changed over the
course of these several months. What had been acceptable to him, before
no longer was.

But Darkwind also was aware that the man could be a very good actor.
Most rulers were, to a greater or lesser extent.

I still have some reservations," he said after a moment. "What occurred in the past is immutable. He has done terrible things to us, and without any provocation. Perhaps he has regrets now, but I find myself wondering if he might not revert to his old ways under pressure."

She sighed. "I think we'd better continue this conversation in a way that can't be overheard," she cautioned.

"Good idea. Sejanes had some magical way of learning Valdemaran and other tongues; there might be someone else here who can do the same thing. Granted, there might not be enough mage-energy for them to do so, but why take the chance? We Tayledras are more suspicious than any other race, I think, but I wish I knew if it was Tremane's better nature that had been subverted by the expediency of the Empire, or his expedient nature that has chosen to disguise itself as a good heart for-well-!

"He's in a position to do everyone more good than harm right now," Gwena pointed out, joining the conversation.

"Gwena's right; and in fact, that's exactly what he has done," Elspeth
seconded. "Look at his record: granted, he coopted the best structure in the area for his headquarters, but other than that, he lives a
relatively lean life for someone who is basically the uncrowned king of
this area. He eats exactly the same food as his men, he isn't wasting
precious resources on extravagant entertainments for his own benefit; in fact, he's pouring a lot of those resources back into the community
here. He never asks his men to do anything he wouldn't, and he's usually out there leading them in person. He thinks first of his men, then of the local folk, then of their land and their beasts, and then of himself," Gwena put in. "That is the pattern that I'm seeing, and
honestly, while some of that might be expediency, it can't all be
explained by that." Darkwind chuckled. "I'm glad he's not handsome; I'd
be jealous. He's managed to seduce both my ladies away from me." Elspeth picked up an inkstand and pretended to throw it at him; he ducked.

"Consider yourself kicked," Gwena retorted.

"Honestly, ke'chara, I would like to give him the chance to prove
himself, and the way he handles the next crisis-which is going to be
very, very bad, I think-will tell us what he's really made of," Elspeth
replied.

Darkwind chewed on that thought a while before replying, wondering if
they were all making a terrible mistake. He wanted to believe in
Tremane, and in the idea that the man was finally allowing himself to
behave in a moral fashion rather than a calculated one. How must it have felt, to spend most of one's life having to plot each and every action without regard to whether or not it was ethically right? If he himself had been in that position, he'd have been driven mad.

All right," he said at last, "but I have one proviso." His jaw tensed as he hardened his mind. "If he proves treacherous, and a danger to the
Alliance-if he is going to cost more lives-we take care of the situation ourselves."

"You mean, kill him." Elspeth nodded, very slowly. "I don't like it-but I don't want another Ancar, much less another Falconsbane. He's used to using magic, and it would be very tempting to resort to the blood-path to get the power he's used to having." She shivered, and so did he; they had both seen far too much of the results of that path. "We've done this before, and I'd rather the blood were on our hands, I suppose, than find that even more innocent blood had been spilled." It was a nasty moral trap; when was murder acceptable? But that was the moral trap that the Tayledras had always been in. Darkwind himself had faced it many times-warning trespassers three times, and assuming that if they did not heed the warning, they were in Hawkbrother lands for evil purposes.

How many would-be enslavers of tervardi and hertasi, mages hunting for
yet more power for the wrong purposes, and would-be murderers of
Hawkbrothers had he eliminated over the years? Enough that he had lost
count.

Elspeth only had a handful of deaths on her conscience, but she was
prepared to add another if the need was there.

And with any luck, we'll all discover that our pessimism is unfounded,"
Gwena said cheerfully. "I']] tell you what; I will see if I can tell
whether or not Tremane has earth-sense, while you make contact with the
loyalists. Darkwind, my dear, we need to rummage through your wardrobe
and find something in it that will not scream foreigner to every person
in the town." What do you mean, we, horse?" he asked her.

Darkwind found his messenger-and Gwena's careful probe of Duke Tremane
uncovered only a verdict of "maybe." Four days later, their aide knocked
tentatively on the door to their quarters just after they'd finished
breakfast. "Excuse me, Envoys?" he said, when Darkwind opened the door
to him. "I don't want to interrupt, but there's a religious gentleman
below who says that you called for him?" Elspeth turned in surprise.
Despite Gwena's assurance, she hadn't really expected an answer to their
message this quickly. The man really must have been fairly close by;
that also argued for certainty on the part of the
Hardornens that they had made Tremane an offer he would find
irresistible.

"We have been expecting him, Jem," Darkwind told the young man. "We just
didn't know when he would arrive. If you are reasonably sure that it is
safe to do so, please show him the way up. Otherwise, if you are not
happy with a potential breach of security, we can arrange to meet him in
the town. Jem flushed. "Oh, no. He's just an old man-it won't cause
any problems. I just didn't know if you wanted to be bothered with him,
if he might be a charlatan or-" He flushed even redder, realizing that
he might have inadvertently insulted all of them.

"That's fine, Jem. Please show him here, and arrange for something hot
for all of us to drink. And perhaps more food, he might not have broken
his own fast yet," Elspeth said, in her kindest tones.

The aide bowed a little, still red with embarrassment, and left quickly.
Tremane's aides were far more used to military situations than to the
diplomatic ones they now found themselves hip-deep in. Elspeth found it
rather charming" actually; military men were, in general, much easier
to deal with and much more straightforward than civilians.

The old man and the second breakfast arrived at the same time; Elspeth
privately thought that she wasn't too surprised Jem had taken him for a
possible charlatan. There was nothing at all remarkable about him. His
hair, gray and a touch on the shaggy side, looked as if he had not put a scissors to it lately.

His build was that of a long-time clerk whose parents may have been
merchants or tradesmen of modest means. His face, square, with a small
beard, was lined with care, yet had smile-creases bracketing his mouth
and eyes. His robes and cloak were clean and serviceable, but hardly
impressive, he wore no liturgical jewels, and his manner was unassuming
and cheerful.

All of which, in her experience, meant that he was probably a very good
priest; good priests like good leaders, gave more to their followers
than they kept for themselves, and were not particularly conscious of
appearances.

They introduced themselves and offered the old man, who called himself
Father Janas, their hospitality. As Elspeth had anticipated, he hadn't
eaten, and he applied himself to the food with a hearty appetite. They
kept conversation to a minimum until he had finished; once he had taken
his cloak Off, it was fairly obvious that, like most Hardornens, he had
been sharing in the hard times. He wasn't emaciated, but he was thin
enough that he had probably been on the same short rations as his
followers. ,

"oh, that was lovely, he said at last, when he had finished,

and leaned back in his chair cradling a cup of hot tea laden with
honey."I'm afraid that my besetting sin is that I cannot resist good food." He
laughed. "Since we are supposed to be spiritual world rather
than the secular concentrating on the failing sooner or later world, I
suspect I shall be chided for my by those to whom I must answer."
Darkwind smiled at that. "I would rather say that you were showing
proper joy and respect for the bounty of the earth," Darkwind replied,
and the old priest chuckled, a twinkle in his eyes.

"Well, shall we deal with the reason that I am here, rather than engage
in rationalizing my shortcomings" he asked, after taking a sip of his
tea. "As I assume you suppose, I have come to test Duke Tremane for
earth-sense, which will mean that I will awake it if it is there; and
once I have done so, I will bind him to Hardorn. Now, nothing I have
been vouchsafed has given me any indication that he does or does not
have the Sense, and I am quite sure that he has no idea what is going to
happen,. do either of you?" Elspeth shook her head. "We don't use that
Gift in Valdemar, or, rather, if we do, it isn't used by Heralds, Bards,
or Healers. And those are the only ones whose training I'm familiar
with," she said."My stepfather has it, but we've never discussed it
much, and he was never formally bound to Valdemar.

I've heard of other latent Gifts being awakened as a theoretical
possibility, but no one in my lifetime has ever tried such a thing."
zed, as the priest turned to him. "The Darkwind shrug Tayledras Healing
Adepts all develop earth-sense along with their other abilities," he
replied. "It doesn't come on them all at once, and if anyone has it
latently, we've never bothered to awaken it. I haven't any idea how
someone would react in such a circumstance." Father Janas raised an
eyebrow. "It can be rather dramatic," 'he said cautiously. "Assuming
that one has it latently, rather than having a very weak version of the
Sense, that is. We have always conducted this particular ceremony
several days before the actual coronation of our kings, precisely
because of that. It sometimes takes the recipient a good deal of time to
get used to his new ability, if heretofore it has only been latent and
when actuated proves to be very strong." Elspeth nodded. "Rather like
suddenly being able to see, I 'suppose," she offered. "Well, that is all
very well in theory~ but you are here to put theory into practice. How
soon would you care to see Duke Tremane? Are there any preparations you
would like to make, any vestments you need to change into before you are
presented?" Father Janas smoothed down the front of his robe
self-consciously." Much as I wish I could present a more impressive
picture, I am afraid that I am wearing my best-indeed, my only
vestments." He licked his lips and looked apologetic.

"Ancar did not persecute priests and clerics directly, but he found many
ways of doing so indirectly. I do not think you will find a single
religious organization in all of Hardorn surviving at better than a
subsistence level, and many simply vanished altogether as old members
died and no new ones came to replace them." He shook his head sadly. "At
any rate, it is all moot; I have no preparations to make, and I should
prefer to see the Duke as soon as possible, as soon as he has the time
free." Darkwind rose to request their aide to take a message to the
Duke. Elspeth had some other ideas, however.

She wrote a short note while Darkwind was talking with Jem, and asked
the aide to take the message down to Tremane' s chief of supply on his
way back from delivering their request for an audience to the Duke. Jem
looked baffled, but agreed; he was obviously not going to question why
the envoy wanted to send a note to the supply sergeant.

"Just what are you up to?" Darkwind asked her, as they closed the door
behind his retreating back and returned to their guest.

Elspeth seated herself before replying. "Tremane told me that he and his
men had virtually gutted an entire Imperial warehouse complex," she told
him, as well as their guest.

"Now, given how the Empire likes to regiment things, even though there
is no official Imperial religion, I am betting that somewhere among all
the uniforms brought back are at least a few standard imperial Army
Chaplains' robes, or something of that nature. And I'm also betting that
they look pretty much like every other priest's robes I've ever seen,
precisely because an Imperial Army Chaplain would have to be able to
conduct the rites of several religions, hence the uniform robe will be
as bland and as general as possible."

"I follow your reasoning so far," Darkwind said, still puzzled." But why
should the supply sergeant let us have one of these uniforms, if they
exist?" She grinned. "I've been talking to the townsfolk. I know that it
is Tremane's standard procedure to sell anything in stores that is not
immediately useful to his soldiers if a civilian wants to buy it. You'll
find a lot of townsfolk outfitted in surplused uniforms of some of the
odder auxiliary disciplines, if you know what to look for. I asked
specifically if I could purchase a set of chaplain's robes if there are
any, and asked him to send them up as soon as he found them." She turned
to the priest, who was a little flushed. "We'll have plenty of time to
alter them into something approximating your own vestments before
Tremane has time to see us." Father Janas looked even more emb~htassed.
"Really, that's too good of you-" She interrupted him with a cautionary
hand. "You're being generous and forgiving; I know that this was a bit
high-handed of me. But we may be more anxious to settle this than you
are, and Id prefer not to leave anything to chance. The Grand Duke isn't
even certain that he believes earth-sense exists; I suspect his attitude
is more that he is humoring us than anything else. We all want him to
agree to go through with something he already considers to be mummery,
and we want him to agree to do it now. The better the impression your
appearance will make on him, the more likely he is to do that." Darkwind
nodded thoughtfully. "Actually," he put in, using an Imperial uniform
may serve us better than if you had come with your own vestments. He has
lived with 'the chaplains. He is going to respect the uniform and what
it represents without realizing he is primed to do so." Father Janas
uttered a faint laugh in self-deprecation. "Well, it is certainly true
that most people rely on one's outward appearance or eir impressions, an
ance is hardly likely to inspire confidence." His admission only
deepened his obvious embarrassment, and Darkwind quickly changed the
subject to that of the conditions over most of Hardorn. The priest was
only too willing to talk about the hardships people all over the country
had and were suffering, and the spirit with which they were enduring
those hardships.

"Everything you saw as you journeyed here is representative of
conditions everywhere in this land," he said, with real sadness. "People
are not starving, but they are hungry. They are not freezing to death,
but they are cold. There is not a single soul in this country that did
not lose at least one member of his family to unnatural death in the
last five years, and as you saw, entire towns and villages have been
emptied.

Temples and other places of worship are deserted, or tended by a few old
men like myself. Worst of all, we have lost most of a generation of
young men, and no matter how much better things become, how can we
possibly replace them? Who will be the parents of our next generation of
citizens?" There are several thousand young men, none of whom will ever
be able to return to the Empire, camped right here, Elspeth thought. And
most of them would be perfectly happy to become the parents of the next
generation of Hardornens. I wonder if he's thought of that~ I know
Tremane has.

At length Jem returned with the answer from Duke Tremhe would be free
immediately after lunch to receive the an(" priest, and if necessary~-
could clear a good portion of the afternoon for the interview.

"That would be wise," Father Janas said, as Darkwind deferred to him.
"Please return, tell him this would be very much to my liking, and ask
him to do so." lem went back with the reply. Not long after he left, one
of the many locals who had been hired to run errands within the Imperial
complex arrived with a large, neat package and a handwritten bill.
Elspeth accepted both, made a face at the mildly extortionate price the
supply officer was charging, but rummaged in her belt-pouch for the
correct number of silver coins anyway. They were Valdemaran rather than
Hardornen or Imperial, but the price had been quoted in silver-weight
and not a specific coinage. Given the circumstances, she doubted that
anyone would care whose face was stamped on them so long as the weight
was true. Those she sent back with the errand boy, as Darkwind handed
the package over to Father Janas. Just as she had suspected, the
official uniform of an Imperial Chaplain was, once the rainbow of
specific accoutrements for various religions and liturgical events were
set aside, virtually identical in cut to the threadbare robe Father
Janas already wore; it was even a very similar gray in color. He retired
to the next room to change, and returned looking much trimmer.

Darkwind surveyed him with a critical eye. "Just what form does your
deity-or deities-take?" he asked the priest.

"Forgive me, but I think we need to make you look a little more
impressive." The priest looked confused but answered readily enough.

"The Earth-father and Sky-mother are usually represented by the colors
green and blue, and by a circle or sphere that is half white and half
black, but-" Darkwind had already turned to the pile of multicolored
stoles and other accessories, sorting through the plethora of plain and
appliqued fabrics, and came up with one stole that was green, and one
blue. Quick work with his knife gave him four halves, two of which he
handed to Elspeth. She had already divined what he was up to, and had
gone into the other room for her sewing kit; a few moments later, she
draped a stole about Father Janas' neck that was green on his right
side and blue on his left.

But it was still too plain, and she took it back from him.

While she cut half-circles of black and white fabric from two of the
other stoles to applique to the ends of the new one, Darkwind left for
their bedroom and returned with a bit of his personal jewelry. "This
probably isn't much like something you would ordinarily wear," he said
apologetically. "But it will probably do for now, and Tremane isn't
going to know the difference between Hardornen and Shin'a'in work." He
handed a copper medallion on a tanned leather thong to Janas; Elspeth
recognized it at once as the sort of token the Shin'a'in carried to
identify themselves or their allies to Tayledras. She had once carried a
similar token, meant to identify her to Kerowyn's kin, as well as to any
Tayledras she might have encountered. This one was engraved with a
swirling, abstract pattern on one side, and a deer on the other.

But a leather thong simply would not do. Now it was Elspeth' s turn to
go back to the bedroom and rummage through her jewelry.

Copper. What do I have that is copper? When they had left, she had
simply tossed everything she owned into a bag, including some of the
pieces meant to go with the costumes that Darkwind himself had designed
for her. A glint of copper at the bottom caught her eye, and she
untangled an interesting belt made of a heavy copper chain entwined with
a light one. She purloined the light chain to hang the medallion from,
then as an afterthought, suggested to Father Janas that he use the heavy
chain for the original purpose of a belt. That was the final touch that
he needed, for the robe had been just a bit long on him; now with the
new robe, stole, belt, and medallion, Janas presented quite a different
picture from the man who had arrived.

He seemed to feel the change as well; he seemed less weary, stood a
little straighter and with confidence matching his natural cheer. All in
all, Elspeth reckoned that they had put in a good morning's work.

"It isn't precisely canonical," Janas told them, "But as you said, no
one here is going to know that, and it does look-wellmuch more
respectable, in the sense of worthy of respect.

I can't begin to thank you enough."

"Thank us if all of this bears fruit," Elspeth replied firmly.

"And speaking of which, here's our lunch." As usual, it was rather plain
fare, but there was plenty of it. Jem seemed startled by Father Janas'
transformation, but treated him with more deference than he had shown
initially, thus confirming Elspeth's feeling that the effort of
reclothing the priest was more than justified. Jem lingered while they
ate, which all of them read as an indication that Tremane was impatient
to have the interview over with quickly. Spurred by that, they made
quick work of their meal.

I think we should let Janas take the lead in this now," she told
Darkwind.

I agree; it will establish his authority from the beginning. After all, officially, we're only involved in this peripherally. We were never more than the informal intermediaries," Darkwind replied.

Elspeth signaled the priest with a slight nod as she set her cup aside.
He read the hint as adroitly as she had thought he would.

"I think we are ready to see Duke Tremane if he is ready for us," Father
Janas said to the aide, standing up and settling his new vestments with
an air of brisk competence.

"He is ready for you, sir," Jem responded with all of the respect that
any of them could have asked. "If you would care to follow me?" He then
looked for a moment with confusion at the two envoys, as if he had, for
that instant, forgotten that they were involved. Clearly he was
uncertain whether they should be properly included in the invitation.

Father Janas solved his problem. "I have asked the Alliance envoys to
accompany me," he said smoothly. "If Duke Tremane has no objection."
gem's face cleared as Janas took the question out of his hands, and he
bowed slightly to all of them. "Certainly, sir. If you would all please
come with me?" All during the quick walk to the Grand Duke's private
quarters, Elspeth was conscious of an increasing feeling of irrational
excitement. Something was going to happen; she wasn't quite certain what it was, but this visit was not going to pass without an event of some sort.

I wish there was something more of Foresight in my family than just an
ability to get an occasional hunch, she thought fretfully. It would be
nice to have some warning when a mountain is about to drop on us.

At last they were finally closeted with Tremane, seated across from him
in three chairs arrayed before his desk. This was not to be the less
formal (Tremane was never informal) sort of meeting that she and
Darkwind had been having with him of late; he had arrayed himself as the
Grand Duke, the Commander of the Army, and the local Power. He wore his
uniform, minus the Imperial devices, but with all of the other
decorations and medals to which he was entitled. He had both a crackling
fire in the hearth and a mage-fire in a stove, imparting a generous
warmth to the room and a fragrant scent of pine resin to the air.
Sunlight streamed in through the windows whose heavy velvet curtains had
been pulled back to let in as much light as possible. He had a choice of
chairs to use here, and he had selected the heaviest and most thronelike
for his use; the desk separated them from him like a fortress wall made
of dark wood.

She was very glad now that she had gone out of her way to dress Father
Janas appropriately. If he had entered this interview looking as shabby
as he had when he had arrived, he would have begun on an unequal footing
with Tremane. As Darkwind had speculated, she could see Tremane
responding to the implied authority symbolized by a "uniform" he
recognized, and Father Janas assumed his rightful position as an
authority equal to his.

As for Elspeth, she was acutely aware of everything around her, her
senses sharpened by her anticipation. Her feeling was so strong that it
was amazing to her to see that Duke Tremane was concealing a certain
amount of polite boredom under a smooth and diplomatic courtesy.

If Janas was put off by Tremane's attitude, he didn't show it. "Duke
Tremane, Father Janas said, "you know why I am here. Those who have led
the struggle against Imperial subjugation have heard of your defection
from the Empire, seen how you have governed and protected the people
here, and have come to the conclusion that you, at least are not
necessarily an enemy to Hardorn." Tremane nodded at this recitation of
the obvious, and waited for him to continue. Behind him, a knot in the
wood on the fire cracked explosively; no one jumped. Janas had clearly
rehearsed his speech many times, until he was comfortable enough with it
that he didn't have to think about it. "The consortium of loyal fighters
believes that, since there is no one man who has been able to become
their clear leader, and since no one in Hardorn commands the resources
that you do, you may be the appropriate person to take up the defense of
this land against outsiders and current adversity." He smiled thinly. "I
will not mince words with you, Duke Tremane. These men are willing,
given other conditions, to allow you to purchase the rule of Hardorn
with the resources and men that you command." He seemed a bit surprised
by Father Janas' bluntness. "That would seem reasonable," he replied
with care. "And I am certainly willing to put those resources into
Hardorn." Father Janas nodded. "So I have been sent here by those men to
discover if you are both fit and willing to lead this nation and help to
defend it against those who would subject it to the rule of a foreign
power-including the Empire." Janas tilted his head in inquiry. The fire
popped again, scattering sparks, as he waited for an answer.

Tremane's reply was brief but polite. "I would welcome the opportunity
to prove my worth, but I would like to point out that I am not, and
never have been, a traitor to any cause. It was the Emperor and the
Empire who abandoned us here; we broke none of the oaths that we had
given. But now that those vows are broken, we see every need to hold
fast to the oaths that we gave to each other. And if, in keeping those
vows, we aid the people here, that is all to the good. Times are
perilous, and whenever loyalty is found, it should be rewarded with
loyalty." His face hardened. "But any new responsibilities that I assume must work with my vows to my men."

"There will be no conflict." Janas nodded, and there was a great deal of
satisfaction on his face. "In keeping with our traditions, the ruler of
Hardorn must be possessed of the quality we know as earth-sense, and be
bound to the land if he has that quality. In order that your consent to
be tested is informed, I shall explain precisely what that means." He
went into a much more detailed explanation than Elspeth or Darkwind had
done, and in Elspeth's opinion, Tremane was a bit too cavalier about the
entire thing. She had not been certain until this moment that the test
for the earthsense involved actually awakening it if it was latent. And
Tremane was clearly preoccupied with some other thought as the priest
explained that if he showed the symptoms of having the earth-sense, he
would be expected to undergo the earthbinding ritual immediately.

Perhaps his own statements to Janas had reminded him of things he needed
to deal with among his own people; perhaps it was only that he was not
inclined to spend his time on something even peripherally connected with
religion. She had the feeling that Tremane was a man who gave secular
respect to religious authority, lip-service to the rituals, and
otherwise gave no thought to the subject. And he considered the entire
business of earth-sense and earth-binding to be essentially religious in
nature, a matter of faith rather than fact.

He has already made up his mind that nothing is going to happen,"
Darkwind commented, as he watched Tremane's attention wandering. "He is
good enough at reading people to know that Janas thinks he can be a good
leader for Hardorn, and I suspect he thinks that is the only "test" he
needed to pass. I think he has decided that Janas will make a couple of
mystic passes, then declare he has the earth-sense, mumble a few
phrases, and say that he is bound to Hardorn, all without anything he
can detect actually occuring." I think he's making a mistake, if that's
the case," Elspeth offered. "I wish he'd listened a bit more closely
because I don't think he really knows what he might be getting into."
Well, it was already too late to say anything, for Tremane nodded with
relief when Janas finished, and said, "Please, I am quite ready if you
can begin now." And Janas was not going to give Tremane a chance to
change his mind, for the priest stood immediately.

"If I may come to your side of the desk, sir?" Janas asked, and at
Tremane's nod, moved around the desk until he stood behind Tremane's
chair, and placed the tips of his fingers on Tremane's temples before
Tremane had a chance to object.

The priest closed his eyes and opened his mouth before Tremane could
pull away from the unexpected touch. Elspeth started, literally jumped,
as what emerged from Janas's mouth was not a chant, but a single, pure,
bell-like tone.

The sound resonated through her, filling her ears and her mind, driving
every thought from her head and rooting her to her chair. She couldn't
have moved if the room had suddenly caught on fire. She couldn't even be
afraid; the tone drove out all emotion, including fear. It had exactly
the same effect on Darkwind, who stared at Janas with round, vaguely
surprised eyes.

But it did not have that effect on Duke Tremane.

Beneath Janas' hands, the Grand Duke stiffened, and his own hands came
up to cover the priest's, but not as if he was trying to tear Janas's
fingers away from his head. His eyes closed, and his hands were clearly
holding Janas's hands in place. His own mouth opened, and a second tone.
harmonizing with the first, emerged from his throat. The effect of the
two tones together was indescribable, and even as Elspeth experienced
it, she was unable to analyze it. She was suspended in time and place,
and nothing existed for her but the two-note song that resonated with
every fiber of her body and soul.

In fact, every sense was involved; colors intensified and became richer,
and there was a scent of growing things and spring flowers filling the
air that could not possibly have been there.

How long that went on, Elspeth could really not have said.

It took no time at all, and it took forever. The moment when it stopped
was as dramatic as that when it had started, for suddenly Tremane's eyes
opened wide, then rolled up into his head; his mouth snapped shut,
cutting off the tone. He let go of Janas' hands, and he collapsed over
his desk as if his heart had suddenly given out.

Elspeth was still frozen, unable to stir. Janas stopped his singing-if
that was what it was-the moment Tremane fell forward. For a moment he
stared at the Grand Duke in something like shock, shaking his hands as
if he had touched a burning coal.

"Well," he said finally, "he certainly has earth-sense." Before either
Elspeth or Darkwind could move, the priest pulled Tremane back up into
the support of his chair, and shook him gently until he awoke.

"Is-" Darkwind began, half standing. Janas waved him back.

"Duke Tremane is simply suffering from the confusion of having a very
powerful new ability thrust upon him," the priest said in a preoccupied
voice. "But there is nothing wrong with him, I promise you. In fact, he
may well be more right than he has ever been before in his life."
Tremane was clearly still dazed, as Janas reached for a letter opener on
the Duke's desk, seized one of his hands, and stabbed the tip of his
index finger with it. He was so dazed, that he acted as if he hadn't
even felt the point of the blade piercing his skin. Janas held onto the
Duke's hand so that Tremane couldn't pull it away, and reached into a
pouch on his belt, pulling out a tiny pinch of earth. He inverted
Tremane's maltreated finger over the bit of dirt, and squeezed until a
single drop of blood fell and mingled with the soil. In the name of the
powers above our heads and below our feet, I bind you to the soil of
Hardorn, Tremane," he intoned, letting go of Tremane's hand and seizing
his chin instead. "In the name of the Great Guardians of the people, I
bind you to the heart of Hardorn," he continued, and took up the pinch
of mingled blood and earth. "In the name of Life and Light, I bind you
to the soul of Hardorn, and by this token, you and the land are one." He
held out the of blood-soaked earth to the Duke's bit e it, and
fortunately, mouth. Tremane opened his lips to receivd prob he swallowed
it rather than spitting it out, which would ably have been a very
unfortunate gesture and a terrible omen. Janas stepped back, watching
the Duke narrowly, and Tremane blinked owlishly at him for a moment.
Then, without any warning, he made an odd little mewing cry and clapped
both hands to his head, covering his eyes with his palms.

Now Elspeth started to rise, but the priest waved her back as well.
"It's quite all right," he said, with immense satisfaction." I can't
begin to tell you how well this is going. He has the strongest
earth-sense that I have ever seen in someone for whom it was latent
until now-and just at the moment, he's a bit disoriented."

"Disoriented?" the Duke said from behind his hands. "By the Hundred
Little Gods, that is far too mild a description!" He sounded breathless, as if he had been running a long and grueling race. "I feel-I feel as if I have been deaf and blind, and suddenly been given sight and hearing and I haven't the least notion what the things I am experiencing mean or what to do with them!" He brought his hands down away from his head, but it was quite clear from the bewildered expression he wore and the dazed look in his eyes that he was undergoing sensations he had never experienced before. "I think I may be ill," he said faintly. "I feel terrible. I'm going to be very, very sick in a moment."

"No, you don't." Janas soothed. "That's not your own body you're
feeling, it's Hardorn. The land is sick, not you, sick and weary.
Separate yourself from it; remember how you felt when you woke up this
morning? That is you, and the rest is the land's ills."

"That's easy for you to say, priest," Tremane replied feelingly. "You
aren't in my head!" He was pale and sweating, and his pupils were so
wide that there was scarcely any iris showing.

But Janas had already gone to the door and had called for Tremane's
aides. "The Duke is not feeling well," he told them. "He needs to be
taken to his bed and allowed to sleep. I think it would be wise to
cancel any appointments he has for the rest of the day." Both aides
looked alarmed at the state of their leader, and one put a hand on the
hilt of his weapon and cast a doubtful glance at Janas, suspecting,
perhaps, that the priest had somehow poisoned the Duke or inflicted a
disease on him.

"It's all right," Tremane reassured them. "I think I've just been
overworking. It's nothing serious." As if that had been a coded phrase
to tell the aides that nothing the visitors had done had caused his
condition, both aides relaxed immediately and went to assist their
leader to stand. "You know that the Healers have been warning you about
overworking yourself," one of them scolded the Duke in a whisper that
the foreigners were probably not supposed to hear. This was an older
man, the Duke's age or even a few years senior to him, and the aide
clearly considered it his responsibility to take Tremane to task. "Now
look what's happened to you! You can't work yourself half to death and
not expect to pay for it!"

"I'll be all right, I just need to sleep," the Duke said vaguely, and
although he was not paying a great deal of attention to his surroundings or his visitors, he no longer seemed quite so disoriented, at least to Elspeth. it seemed more as if he had focused his attention inward, in a state of partial trance.

His two aides helped him into the other room, and Janas nodded at the
door. Taking the hint, Elspeth and Darkwind rose and followed the priest out.

"Don't you need to be with him, to give him some kind of instruction?"
Darkwind asked anxiously as they made their way along the cold corridors back to their own quarters.

The old man shook his head; he still had that air of great
self-satisfaction. "No, he already has the instruction; that was what I
was giving him at the beginning. It's all there for him to use, he just
needs to sort things out while he sleeps. Don't worry, we've been doing
things this way for centuries, not just with our monarchs, but with
priests whose earth-sense is also latent. But I must say, this is
probably the most successful ritual I have ever done!" He rubbed his
hands together with unconcealed glee. "Now we'll have to get word across the country what has happened, plan for a coronation, find something like a crown--oh, there are a hundred arrangements we'll have to make." He shook his head, interrupting himself, as they reached the door of their quarters. "I hope you won't think me rude, but I am going to have to leave immediately. There is just too much I have to do, and not a great deal of time to do it in.

We'll be sending important people here soon, as liaisons with our new
monarch. In the meantime, I think I can count on both of you to help him through the next day or two."

"I can certainly help explain what he is feeling," Elspeth replied, but
with a little doubt, opening the door and waving him inside ahead of
her. "I suspect it might be like the first time I was-ah-blessed with
Mindspeech."

"Exactly, exactly!" Janas said, as he gathered up his old robe and made
it into a neat bundle. Then he looked down in confusion at the clothing
he was wearing, and for a moment, certainty was replaced with
uncertainty. "Ah-I-"

"Consider the new vestments a gift from the Alliance Darkwind said,
divining his question before he could ask it. "And please feel free to
approach us if any of your other liaisons might need similar
outfitting." Janas turned, taking his hand and shaking it with
gratitude.

"Thank you, thank you for all your help!" he said, brimming with so much effervescent pleasure that Elspeth could not help but smile back at him. "Now, I really must be off, there is absolutely not a moment to waste!" He hurried to open the door to the hallway; fortunately, one of the sentries at the door intercepted him and offered to find an aide to
escort him out. He accepted absently as he pulled his shabby cloak on
over his new finery, and the last that Elspeth saw of him, he was
explaining to the aide some of the preparations that would need to be
made to get ready for Tremane's coronation as the new King of Hardorn.

Elspeth closed the door behind them, and joined Darkwind who was
sprawled bonelessly on the couch. She suddenly felt as if she had been
running an endurance test, and collapsed beside him.

"Well," he said finally. "I confess I am at a loss for words."

"I have a few," she told him, putting her head on his shoulder." But
mostly, I can't begin to tell you how relieved I feel." She turned her
head so that she could see his face, and he smiled into her eyes. "You
know how the Shin'a'in are always saying to be careful of what you ask
for," he chided gently.

"And you did ask for some sort of cheek on Tremane's behavior as a
leader."

"I did." She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "I can't say
that I'm at all unhappy about how this has fallen out. This means the
probable end of conflict inside Hardorn.

They're going to have a real, competent leader. He is going to be
incapable of misusing the land or the people, and I have the oddest
feeling that he won't even be able to think about going to war with
anyone unless Hardorn is threatened first." Darkwind kissed her
forehead, then rested his head back against the back of the couch,
staring up at the ceiling. "At the moment, I feel a great deal of
sympathy for him. This may not be a punishment commensurate with what he did to our people, but he is going to be suffering real and sometimes serious discomfort for quite some time if things./' I am any judge of these

"Because of the state of the country, you mean?" she asked.

He nodded. "Absolutely. You heard Janas; Hardorn is sick, injured, and
only now beginning to recover. He gets to experience all that, until the land is healed again. What's more, when the mage-storms start up again, whatever they do to the land, he'll feel as if it's happening to him," She chuckled, a little heartlessly. "I wonder what having bits of the countryside plucked out and transplanted elsewhere will feel like?"

"Nothing I would care to share," Darkwind said emphatically.

She contemplated the prospect, and it didn't displease her. And she knew someone else who would find the new situation very much to her liking.

"I wonder how long it will take to get word of this to Solaris?" she
mused aloud.

"Not long, trust me," Gwena replied… And, oh, to be a fly on the wall
when it does!"

As the official-unofficial liaisons to Tremane on behalf of the rest of
Hardorn, Elspeth and Darkwind found themselves dealing with a dozen
requests the next morning that were the direct result of Father Janas'
work the previous day- "you know, it is just a good thing that all this
is happening in the dead of winter, Elspeth remarked to her mate, as she dealt with yet another request for "Royal Patronage" from a merchant in the town. "If we were in the midst of decent weather, we'd have half the country trying to get here for this coronation Janas wants to arrange." Darkwind had handed most of the correspondence over to her, for the Hawkbrothers had no equivalent to royalty and the pomp and display that went with such personages. He shook his head. "I feel as lost as a tiny frog in the midst of Lake Evendim. Or a forest-hare in the middle of the Dhorisha Plains," he said ruefully. "Now I know what your people mean when they speak of feeling like a "country cousin." I haven't any idea what half these people want from Tremane."

"Frankly, neither have they," she replied dryly. "Royalty is rather like a touchstone to those who are accustomed to kings and queens and the like. One judges one's own worth by one's worth to the king, whether or not the king is himself a worthy person. All these people are attempting to gather about Tremane in the hope that some of the glitter will rub off." She would have said more, but at that moment, there came a knock on their door. When Darkwind went to answer it, much to her surprise, Tremane himself stood in the doorway, guarded by his older aide, and looking a bit wan.

"Might I come in?" he asked. "Something in these memories of mine says
that you might be able to help me. Sort things out, that is." Darkwind
waved him in; the aide remained behind, but with a look that said he
would station himself at the door and not move until Tremane left again.

The Duke took a seat on their couch, and Elspeth made a quick assessment of him. For once he was hiding nothing; she suspected that at the moment he simply was unable to. He was still quite unsettled, disoriented, and distinctly wild eyed. She handed him a fragrant cup of kava, a beverage the Imperials favored that she had also begun to enjoy, as much for the effect it had of waking one up as for the flavor.

"You know," he began plaintively, "when you came here, I told you that I accepted this mind-magic of yours, but to tell you the truth, I didn't entirely believe in it. You could have done everything you claimed simply by having two well-trained beasts and a clever set of subtle signals. Spirits, putting one's thoughts into someone else's head-that was all so much nonsense and only the really credulous would have given it much credence  ... .

His voice trailed off, and Elspeth nodded. "Now, for the first time, you are in the grip of something you can't explain. Right?" she asked.

He nodded, looking oddly vulnerable and forlorn. "Magic is supposed to
be a thing of logic!" he protested. "It has laws and rules, they are all perfectly understandable, and they bring predictable results! This is all so-so-intuitive. So unpredictable, so messy-" Darkwind started to laugh, and the Duke looked at him suspiciously." I don't see what is so amusing."

"Forgive me, sir," Darkwind choked. "But very recently a friend of ours, who truly and with all of his heart believed that magic was wholly a thing of intuition and art, having nothing to do with laws and logic, was confronted with the need to regard magic as you and your mages do. And he sounded just like you do now-the contrast is just-" He choked, trying to swallow his laughter, and Elspeth, who recalled quite well how Firesong had sounded, had to work very hard not to join him. That would not have done Tremane's spirit any good at the moment.

"When you have gotten used to this, I think that you'll find it has its
own set of rules and logic, and you'll be able to deal with it in a
predictable manner," she soothed. "This is simply as if-as if someone
had dropped all of the rules of mathematics and geometry into your mind, and expected you to deal with them. You're overwhelmed with information, and I promise you that will change." Darkwind managed to get himself under control, and took a seat next to the Duke. "I'll help you as much as I can," he pledged. "I am probably the nearest to an expert, until Janas or someone like him comes back here." Tremane let out a sigh, and began slowly trying to ask questions for which the vocabulary was as new to him as the concepts.

Elspeth listened carefully, adding what she could, and relaying when
Gwena had any useful information to add.

Poor man," she said to Gwena, though not without a touch of faintly
vindictive amusement. "The only thing more unsettling to him right now
would be for the ghosts of his ancestors to come back to haunt him, or
for a Companion to Choose him." Oh, now there's a thought," Gwena
replied, and at Elspeth' s reaction of alarm, sent a chuckle of
amusement of her own. "Don't worry. The only way that Tremane would ever be Chosen would be for most of the population of Hardorn and Valdemar to be swallowed up by the earth, and even then, I wouldn't put high odds on it." At least now he'll believe us when we say you've said something." That was a satisfying realization.

Then something else occurred to Elspeth. "Darkwind," she told her mate,
"I think this is best treated as something like Empathy. Janas may have
put the rules for dealing with it in his mind, but if the Gift is so
very strong, he may be so overwhelmed by the sensations that he can't
actually relate them to what is happening. Try taking him through ground and centering, then shielding, just as you would someone with strong Empathy." He nodded slightly, and changed his angle of attack on the problem. To Elspeth's way of thinking, this was actually going to be easier than dealing with someone with Empathy; there would be no changes in what he sensed as people around him underwent emotional changes. Since what he felt from the land was quite steady, with no sudden increases in intensity, once he learned to shield he would not have to learn to strengthen or weaken his shields.

In fact, he wouldn't want to; he needed to know when the land was
harmed, and he couldn't do that if his shields were too strong.

She watched the two of them as Darkwind coaxed him through his first
exercises. She came to the conclusion, watching his rapid Progress, that there was more to what Janas had given him than mere instructions; once he had a grasp of the technique Darkwind was showing him, it didn't take him long to apply the technique correctly.

Too bad we can't teach every young Herald the way Janas 'taught' him,"
she remarked wryly to Gwena.

It would take an ability most Heralds haven't got," Gwena replied
frankly, and a bit enviously. "For that matter, most companions haven't
got it either. I didn't realize until now just how remarkable old Janas
is."

"Oh, really? That made her reexamine the priest and his mission in
an entirely new light, and wonder just what his real rank in the
hierarchy of his religion was. Something equivalent to the Son of the
Sun, perhaps? Probably only someone like Solaris would be able to tell
for certain.

The only conclusion she could make was that the Hardornens had left
nothing to chance in this venture, and had gambled a great deal.

But she kept all of this to herself; it wouldn't matter one way or
another to the situation, and Tremane had enough on his hands right now
with this new ability and the responsibility of becoming a King.

Becoming a King. What a strange idea that is. I can't think of any ruler in this part of the world who has been picked by his people since-since Valdemar. The parallels were coming closer all the time.

Tremane absorbed all that Darkwind showed him like dry ground absorbing
rain; slowly the lines of anxiety and strain left his face, and the
signs of disorientation and illness eased from his posture and
expression. Finally, he sighed and closed his eyes with relief.

"I feel-normal," he said, as if he had never expected to feel that way
again.

He opened his eyes, and Darkwind smiled with satisfaction.

"That is precisely how you should feel," the Hawkbrother told him. "You
shouldn't have to think about those shields for them to be there, since
you are already acquainted with setting magical shields. They should
remain in place until you take them down or weaken them yourself. Now
the only things you will feel will be when something happens to Hardorn
for good or ill; you'll sense the change as soon as it happens."

Tremane colored a little, and coughed. "I seem to recall some
injudicious words to the effect of wanting an ability that would give me that information." Darkwind's smile turned ironic, but he didn't say
anything.

He didn't have to.

Surely every culture has a variation on the saying, "Be careful what you ask for, you may get it."

"Well, sometimes the Hundred Little Gods display an interesting sense of humor," Tremane sighed.

"They've displayed it more directly than I think you realize," Darkwind
told him. "Are you aware that thanks to this 'gift' that Janas bestowed
on you, that you are literally bound to Hardorn? You can't leave, at
least not for long."

Tremane shot him a skeptical glance. "Surely you are exaggerating."

Darkwind shook his head. "I am not. You will not be able to go beyond
the borders of this land for very long. Janas was not speaking
figuratively as we both assumed when he made his explanations to you. I
know enough of magical bindings to recognize one on you, and I doubt
that anyone can break it.

This is the magic of a very primitive religion, meant to ensure that a
ruler could not get wandering feet and go off exploring when he should
be governing." Elspeth watched Tremane's face; though normally opaque,
this experience had left him open-not as open as an ordinary person, but open enough for her to read his expressions.

"What you're saying is, this earth-binding they put on me ensures that
there is no possibility of going back to the Empire." Darkwind held his
hands palm up. "The most primitive magics tend to be the strongest, the
hardest to break. Perhaps a better word would be primal. I suspect this
one may date back to the tribes wandering this area before the Cataclysm.

It was a fascinating piece of work to watch; no chants, no real ritual,
just a tonal component as a guide for invocation, and of course the
mental component. Simple but powerful, and that argues for a piece of
work that is very old, and so proven by time that it is, in fact, a
benchmark by which later magics could be judged." As Tremane sat there,
with a dazed look in his eyes and a numb expression, Darkwind warmed to
his subject. "It really does make sense. If you have a tribe that has
recently settled, given up nomadic, hunting and herding ways and gone
into agriculture, it stands to reason that your best leaders, the ones
who are likely to be the most successful at defending your settlement
from other nomads, are the people most likely to want to go back to the
unsettled ways. If you want to keep them where they belong and give them a powerful incentive to hold the land in trust and not plunder and ruin it, you'd bind them to it."

"I get the point, all too clearly," Tremane interrupted dryly.

"Seeing as I am the one blessed with this particular application of
'primitive' magic, and now am prisoner in an all too clear way." He
rubbed his head with his hand, absently. "No disrespect to you, Darkwind k'sheyna, but speculation about the origin of this bit of religious arcana is moot, and it can probably wait until the happy day when everything is settled again an you an Janas can argue a out history to your hearts' content." Darkwind was not at all embarrassed. In fact, he graced Tremane with the expression of a teacher whose student has missed the point of the lesson. But all he said aloud was,
"Duke Tremane, if you wish to know how and why a magic works the way it
does, you must learn or deduce its origin and purpose. In complex
spell-work, the causes, triggers, paths, and effects are not always
obvious, and are often fragile. In more primal spell-work, the variables may be fewer, but they are not necessarily any more obvious. You cannot unmake a thing-supposing you should choose to do so-without knowing how it is made."

"Supposing I should choose to do so..." Tremane's voice trailed off,
and he stood up to go look out the window. "I am not, by nature, a
religious man," he said, with his back to them.

"We rather gathered that, sir," Elspeth put in, her tone so ironic it
made Tremane turn for a moment to give her a searching look. "There is not much in the Empire that would make one believe in gods, much less that they have any interest at all in the doings of mortals," he said, looking straight into her eyes.

"Tangible effect is the focus in the Empire. Results and tasks of the
day take a distinct precedence over thoughts of divine influence or the
spirit world. The closest thing to a religion of state is a form of
ancestor veneration, which takes its higher form as the honoring of
previous Emperors and their Consorts, who are collectively known as the
Hundred Little Gods. Not that there are exactly a hundred, but it's a
nice, round figure to swear by."

"Id wondered about that," Darkwind murmured.

"Nor have I in the past been one to put credence in either predestined
fate or omens. Nevertheless," he continued, "since arriving here, I have been confronted, time and time again, with situations that have literally forced me into the path I am now taking. I find myself beginning to doubt the wisdom of my previous position regarding destiny." Elspeth could not resist the opportunity. "If you would care for some further proof that your previous position on the dais faulty," she offered, "I am sure that High Priest Solaris vine would be happy to arrange for a manifestation of Vkandis Sunlord." It was wrong of her, but after all that Tremane had been responsible for, she could not help but take a certain amount of vengeful pleasure in the way that his face turned pale at the mere mention of Solaris' name.

"That won't be necessary" he said hastily.

"As you wish," she murmured, with an amused glance at Darkwind.

Well, talk about fire to the left and torrent to the right-not only does he have Solaris' curse of truthfulness on him, but the Hardornen
earth-binding." Gwena sounded unbelievably smug, but for once, Elspeth
was in full agreement with her. "I do believe that Grand Duke Tremane is going to be very cooperative with the Alliance from now on-because if he isn't, he hasn't got the option to escape and he knows it." And I just thought of another good reason for putting the earth-binding on your King," Darkwind Sent silently, as Tremane turned back to the window. "If you bind him to a place so that he can't escape from it, he has to rule well, because he certainly can't ignore what he is immersed in." Let's hope that's one of the things he's thinking about right now," Elspeth replied. "He is a skilled leader and an intelligent man, and he is certainly a pragmatic one. It should dawn on him soon just how deep in he is right now, and then he will have to accept it and deal with the tasks at hand. For the sake of the Alliance as well as of Hardorn, I want him to know he has no other option but to rule wisely and honestly. We can't afford anything less."

Paper rustled quietly, the only sound in the cold, cavernous room. Baron Melles read the last page of Commander Sterm's report with a smile of satisfaction on his lips. Jacona, the throne city, was now effectively secured. Although the capital of the Empire was not precisely under martial law, his soldiers shared the streets and
the patrols with the city constables, and both were happy to have the
situation that way. He had tried his plan out here, where everything was directly under his careful supervision, and his ideas had all worked. They had not worked perfectly, but he had never expected perfection; they had worked well enough that he and Thayer were both pleased.

As he had predicted, the price of staple food supplies had increased as
the availability had decreased, to the point where the average person
either could not find or could not afford two out of three meals. That
was enough to trigger food riots, his first shoot-to-kill order, and his second tier of plans. Jacona was already divided into precincts, with an elected official, the precinct captain, responsible for arranging local matters such as street repair with the city. That made organization much easier. The citizens of Jacona were now under strict rationing, with so many ration chits per commodity per week each, as arranged and administered by their precinct captains.

Price controls went into effect with the rationing. No one was starving, and prices, while high, were no longer as extortionate as they were. Food supplies from the surrounding countryside had been assured, and those ration chits guaranteed that everyone would have access to a minimum diet. The chits did not cover luxury items, only staples, permitting those with higher incomes the ability to buy what they chose.

Naturally, there would be some citizens who would choose barter away
their own chits and even those of members of their families for cash or
other commodities, such as alcohol. And naturally, the Empire
officially took no stand on this, so long as those who were involved
were adults.

A child was different, and precinct captains were on orders to watch
for children begging for food. If they found a child starving, and if
its parent could not produce its ration chits or enough food to cover
the household, the child (and its ration allocation) would be taken away and put in an Imperial orphanage.

That would be the end of that; once taken away, a parent could not
retrieve a child, and it became the ward of the State.

Once it turned fourteen, if male it would go into the Army; if female,
underdeveloped, or sickly, an Army auxiliary corps or a workhouse-unless it showed extraordinary ability and qualified for higher training. But that was child welfare, and had nothing to do with rationing.

Naturally, there were luxuries and larger rations available for cash,
and the Empire took no stand on this, either, so long as the commodities for sale on the gray market were not purloined from Imperial stores. Meals and services continued normally in the homes of the wealthy, although household expenses had doubled in the past few weeks. From what Melles had learned from his agents, prices on the gray market had stabilized, which meant that the wealthy would simply have to work a little harder to maintain their wealth. Many of them had already begun investment in coal, wood, and other fuels, or speculation in food items. There were a few with new-built fortunes in the city, because they had seen the trend of things and had moved accordingly. There were a few who were ruined, because their stock-in-trade consisted of small items that depended on magic, or because they were dealers in items like Festival costumes that no one wanted to buy under the current conditions. But so far as Melles could see, aside from these few unlucky or clever individuals, nothing much else had changed.

There were no more riots after the first serious one that gave Melles
the excuse to issue his shoot-to-kill order, and which had resulted in
the death of a dozen fools who happened to be leading it. There were
occasional demonstrations, and a great many speeches on street corners,
which were officially ignored. There were also no more collapsing
buildings, or loss of service because magic had failed. This was because there were no more services left--~or buildings still standing-that depended on magic.

There was plenty of work, though, and the one large change was that
unemployment simply did not exist anymore. Those who demonstrated or
made speeches did so when their working hours were over-unless of
course, they happened to be one of the few wealthy eccentrics who did
not need to work to have an income. Where magical aqueducts no longer
supplied water, and there were no communal wells, brigades of otherwise
unemployed citizens with buckets brought fresh water from reliable
sources to fill newly-constructed below- or above-ground cisterns. An
entire newly-formed corps of citizens with handcarts now collected
garbage, cinders, and ashes from fires, and animal waste from the
streets and yards. Fortunately, the sewers were nonmagical in nature,
and still functioned reliably.

Life in the city was not back to the way it had been, and never would be again until these mage-storms were over, but the ordinary citizen went to work, received his pay, ate regular meals, and slept securely at night. If he was colder this winter than last, or a little hungrier,
well, that was the case for all of his neighbors, too. But not only were his streets kept clear of dangerous riots, they were also kept clear of vagrants and beggars-for vagrants and beggars swiftly found themselves in Imperial workhouses or work gangs, cleaning the streets and carrying water for the good of the ordinary citizen. This made the ordinary citizen happy. What made him even happier was the fact that Imperial workers were toiling day and night to find ways to restore more of the things that he had come to take for granted in the days of reliable magic. Already some things had been replaced-safe stoves that could burn a variety of fuels, from dried dung to coal, were now being made available at a moderate price from Imperial workhouses. Imperial
bathhouses and laundries had been established, so that if a man could
not afford to heat water for regular baths and laundry, he could still
have those baths and get his clothing clean for a few copper bits.
The average citizen could look forward to eventually regaining the kind
of comfortable life he had lost.

And if he had to give up some of his freedom to get that life back,
well, all but a few malcontents thought that was an acceptable loss.
Some folk even welcomed these new work, houses and work gangs, and were
happy to see soldiers patrolling the streets and sweeping up those with
nothing better to do than to make trouble. It was true that crimes like
assault, robbery, rape, and burglary had dropped to almost nothing the
deadly-force patrols had been deployed on the street level.

Well, assault, robbery, rape, and burglary by citizens against citizens
have dropped to almost nothing. No one in his right mind is going to
report a soldier or constable for "Such a crime. And if there is no
report, there is no crime, and hence officially no problem.

So far, everything that he had set in motion in Jacona was working well
or would be with a few slight adjustments. Now was the moment to plan the next steps. He put both elbows on the desk, tented his fingers together and rested them lightly over his lips, thinking.

He stared at the flame in the oil lamp on his desk that replaced the
mage-light that had once burned there. The desk had been placed
near to the antiquated fireplace, which better, more improved version of the official stove, a contrivance of ceramic and steel that burned coal rather than ore Imperial cleverness, that; coal fires burned hotter than wood, and although the smoke coming from them was dirtier and might cause a problem one day, this new "furnace" invention would get them through the winter. All the fires in the Palace and in most of the homes of the noble and wealthy had these furnaces, and the coal mines, which once produced only fuel for the smelting furnaces for the metal trade, now sent huge wagonloads into the city on daily deliveries. A variation on this furnace heated the boilers that held a  and once again delivered hot water into the bathing rooms of Crag castle and other edifices-and also supplied the hot water for the Imperial bathhouses and laundries. Interestingly enough, his entire situation was proving to be surprisingly profitable for the Imperial coffers, for not only was the Empire collecting more tax money, since taxes were based on profits, but the Empire was also something of a merchant, selling heating-and cook-stoves and the services of the bathhouses.

Theft of coal was punishable-like all theft-by being sent to a work
gang. So were the crimes of inciting to riot, participating in a riot,
looting, chronic public drunkenness, vandalism, vagrancy, and
delinquency. Any crime against property rather than against a citizen
now bought the perpetrator a stint in hard labor rather than gaol or the Army. The new policy made for quiet streets.

Tremane would never have ordered all of this; Tremane didn't have the
vision or the audacity, and perhaps not even the intellectual capacity
to mastermind such sweeping plans on such a broad scale at such short
notice.

Melles continued to stare at his lamp flame, but nothing in the way of
inspiration occurred to him. He reached for another, much shorter
report, and leafed through it again. Perhaps before he thought more
about the next stage of his plans, it was time to deal with his covert
operations.

All in all, once the food riots were quashed, there had been fewer
complaints than he had anticipated, and very little civil unrest. That
came as something of a surprise, because he had assumed there would be a higher level of resistance to his new laws than there actually was.

So, all that meant was the good citizens of Jacona were being very good, going where he led like proper sheep.

There were, of course, a few wild goats out there still-the inevitable
underground "freedom" movement, which he had also anticipated. How could there not have been? There were always those who would not be hoodwinked into accepting restrictions on their freedom, no matter how one disguised those restrictions.

The Citizens for Rights group correctly identifies you as the source of
all of the new edicts and punishments, the report, written by the head
of his network of low-level agents in the city, read. They assume that
the Emperor knows nothing, and that with enough work they will be able
to draw his attention to your abuses and have you ousted. Failing that,
and assuming that you somehow have the Emperor under your personal
control, they plan on a general citizens' uprising to overthrow the
entire government.

That was also precisely what he had anticipated; not only did it not
alarm him, he was actually rather pleased that he had predicted the
development so accurately. His agent was not particularly worried, but
he wanted more instructions about what to do now that he had identified
the movement, its goals, and its members.

He picked up a pen and took a clean sheet of paper from the tray at the
side of his desk. He wrote in code without having to think about the
translation; he'd had enough experience at it that he could write
directly to any of his agents in the correct code. This was a
content-sensitive code, rather than an encoded letter; to all
appearances, this missive was a perfectly ordinary letter about
commonplaces, from a servant in the Palace to a relative in the city.

What it really said, however, was something else entirely.

Do nothing to openly disrupt the movement against me.

As for the general citizens, continue to feed them misinformation;
concoct tales of my helplessness in the face of the Emperor's growing
tyranny. Make them think that I am trying to stem the Emperor's excesses and that Charliss himself is directly responsible for everything they object to. What I want is to hear that even the members of the Movement are starting to call me "The Peoples' Friend." Continue to identify all new members of the Movement, and if any really effective leaders emerge, identify their weaknesses and find ways to handicap them without actually removing them.

Keep me informed at all times.

He started to seal up the envelope, then thought of something else and
added a second page.

There are always bureaucratic mistakes; men taken up in a street-sweep
who were actually on their way to work, outright victims of some
soldier's personal feud. These people will know of each and every
one-send me the particulars so I can arrange for investigations and turn a few loose with restitution. If any of them have young children
suffering hardship without their father, mark them especially.

Now he sealed and addressed the letter and put it in the tray for his
house agent to take to the appropriate drop. That last addition was
nothing less than inspiration; all he would have to do would be to have
one of the clerks deal with the paperwork to free the man, and send the
family a little money, some luxury food items, and a basket of sweets
for the children, and Melles would be a hero on the street. And he
needn't trouble himself about petitioners plaguing him either. Now that
he was officially the Emperor's Heir, the layers of bureaucracy between
him and the citizen on the street were so many, so complex, and so
labyrinthine that the average citizen would die of old age before he
completed all of the paperwork required for an audience with him. This
would only generate a little more work in the way of petitions, and
there were plenty of low-level Imperial civil servants to take care of
additional petitions.

Perhaps another man might have sent soldiers to arrest every member of
the Movement-but another man did not have the depth of experience that
Melles did. As long as he knew who belonged to these organizations, who
were the real leaders and workers, and what their failings were, he was
better off leaving them all in place. In times like these,
insurrectionist movements were like cockroaches; squash one and a
hundred more would hatch behind the wallboards. Rebels actually tended
to thrive on a certain level of persecution, since persecution validated their cause in the eyes of others. In fact, many of them absolutely required feeling persecuted-and speaking loudly of it-in order to validate their own meager existence, since obviously only a Great Good would be opposed by a Great Evil. What made this even funnier, in a cripple-pitying sort of way, was that they would only proclaim their oppression to those peers least likely to disagree with them.

Melles, of course, played one facet of the same game on a much higher,
more sophisticated level. People invariably polarized their views when
they were given little information about a situation's complexities. If
someone was not for your cause, then they must be against your cause; if not black, then white; if not day, then night. While the
perennially-oppressed would use this tendency in human behavior to
generate sympathy from others, Melles used it to steer public reaction.
his actual plans and coups were more complex than could be briefly
discussed by any layman, and he used fronts-like the labor groups and
the police-to act as buffers and visible representations.

He created simple concepts for laymen to absorb and react to, while
giving little information about the greater, more complex goings-on.
Thus, even the most clever leaders of rebel movements would be basing
their actions upon in complete information at best, low-end rumor at
average, and utter fabrications at worst. Worst for them, anyway; for
Melles it was simply human behavior according to schedule.

No, he would watch them, occasionally nurture them, frustrate and thwart them, and use them, but above all, he would let them have their little 'committee meetings' and make speeches and inflame one another. That kept them quiet and mostly harmless. The more they ranted about being suppressed under improving conditions, the less anyone would listen to or believe in them.

It was better to remove the occasional competent and dangerous member
than to go after the entire group. If he could not manage to do so in
any other way, the really dangerous ones would tragically die while
defending themselves against a street thug or a house robber. Then,
before the person could be martyred, various carefully-contrived
"secrets" about them would turn up during "investigation" of the
death-evidence that they were child molesters, for instance-to spoil the probable public outrage there would otherwise have been, and that
distaste would carry over to be associated with any of the person's
movement. It would only take ten or twenty such instances for the
general citizenry to feel relieved that these troublemakers were gone.

On the whole, he enjoyed the amateur "freedom fighters" as delightful
entertainment, and if no group had sprung up, he would have had to start one just to have an organization to attract the real troublemakers. The most dangerous would be the very few individuals who realized that groups were obvious targets, and determined to undermine the authorities on their own. If he could catch someone like that, it would be by accident.

But the insurrectionist groups had their uses, not the least of which
was that they gave the hotheads a place to vent their spleen. When they
were making speeches, they were not setting fire to a storehouse of
records, counterfeiting and giving away food chits, or breaking into a
work camp and freeing prisoners.

Better a thousand fools' ineffectual speeches than a single food riot.

He moved that report from the "pending" tray to the "completed" tray,
and turned his attention to the next in line. If conditions had not been so dire, he would have been positively gleeful; never had he possessed so much power over so many, and the sensation brought an intoxication he had not expected.

Report after report, from the heads of his specialized covert operations rings around the city, indicated that events were proceeding with as much smoothness as anyone could reasonably expect. The only things that could not be planned for were the effects of the mage-storms, and he hoped he had made enough allowance for the chaos those could cause. The precinct captains were political creatures, and although they were elected, he could replace them at his discretion. They could and would lie to save their jobs. The Imperial Commander was less likely to lie, yet still might shade the truth to conceal problems. His agents, however, were carefully picked and trained and they never reported anything but the facts, no matter how unpleasant. That was their job; he rewarded the truthful and got rid of those who were not-sometimes permanently, if they had been in a delicate or sensitive position. These reports confirmed his impression that the city was his: pacified, and lying quietly in the palm of his hand.

That was good, because he had no intention of leaving the capital, and
he wanted it secured so that he could turn his attention to the Empire
beyond without worrying about his personal safety and comfort. The power that gave him his authority was here, and although by now he could carry out his plans if the Emperor changed his mind and made someone else the Imperial Heir, it would be much more difficult to do so. He had the Army, but that might not be the case if the Emperor appointed a new man-and to subdue the rest of the Empire, he needed the Army.

Now that he knew what was working with Jacona, he knew what would work
outside the capital. He returned to the longer report that he had set
aside; this was the condensed version of what was going on in the Empire itself.

In the immediate vicinity, the countryside could reasonably be declared
"pacified" as well. The sources of disturbance were those of chaos
rather than man's intention-terrible weather and roving monsters rather
than rioters. Within the small towns and villages, people were in no
danger of going hungry but they were terrified. Physical storms could
sweep down at any moment, bringing snow that could bury a village to the eaves, winds that could rip a building apart, blizzards combining the two that lasted for days at a time. That was bad enough, but in the
midst of the storms, terrible, malformed creatures came ravening into
their very streets, monsters that no one recognized or knew how to kill.

On the estates, things were sometimes even worse, for most nobles did
not keep many retainers who were trained to fight; this close to the
capital, keeping a small private army was generally frowned upon. So
there had already been a case or two of a storm burying an estate. and
before the servants could dig it out again, a bloodthirsty creature had
appeared that kept them all penned inside-and in one case decimated the
entire estate.

One less annoying minor noble to endure.

The Army was handling that situation with all the efficiency that anyone could ask for. Melles was both pleased and surprised to learn that General Thayer had deployed squads of monster hunters before ever
implementing the requisition orders that Melles's secretary had drawn
up. With scores of monstrous beasts hanging from hooks on display in
village squares and estate courtyards, people had not only been happy to "donate" the items the Army requisitioned, they had even come forward with additional help. Some truly antique equipages had been made roadworthy-but also some very clever work had been put into the hands of the Army as well. Some genius of a village blacksmith had come up with a way to fasten runners on the wheels of carriages after locking those wheels in place, so that instead of having to wait until snow had been removed from the roads, carts could skim over the top of it. Practically speaking, what that meant was that the Army supply trains bringing food into the city could use roads with a single, narrow track cut for the horse or mule rather than needing to clear the
entire road.

Pity that the wicker snowshoe for horses didn't really work, then we
wouldn't have to clear the roads at all, or even use the roads. It is
ironic that the poor are turning out to be the saviors of the wealthy,
for only they had the knowledge of how to do things in completely
nonmagical ways. Other than that, life in the countryside was not at all bad; certainly better than in the city. Firewood was immediately
available. So was food, in a greater variety than the cities were seeing now. Life on the estates was even better, and Melles was fairly sure that those nobles who had fled back to their possessions were by-and-large congratulating themselves for having had the wisdom to do so.

So much for life in the immediate vicinity of the capital.

Now for the other large cities... With a few variations, it seemed that what had worked for Jacona would work for any large city in the Empire.
He had to make allowances for local religion in a few places, and for
one brand new cult in Deban that had virtually taken over the entire
city, but for the most part, there were not too many changes he needed
to make.

Finally, he finished the last of the replies he needed to make to Thayer and to his own agents in the field. His hands were cramped by the time he was done, and one of the servants had come in to check the fire and add coal twice. Despite the fire, the room was icy; for all its luxurious fittings, it was less comfortable than a warehouse.

Perhaps a sheepskin cover for his desk chair would help, and a charcoal
brazier for under the desk. Better still, he ought to have his valet
bring in the same kinds of amenities that the Imperial clerks used. He
flexed his aching fingers and rose, feeling the cold in every stiffened
joint. He knew with grim certainty that his battle with the
encroachments of age was failing. Before all this nonsense with the
mage-storms had begun, he had started on his own minor rejuvenation
magics.

He resented the fact that they had failed him now, at a time when he
most needed his body to be in perfect health. He simply could not afford any distractions, yet what were all these aches and pains but irritating distractions? Reminders of mortality?

He went to the heavy gilded and carved sideboard where the blown-glass
decanters of liquor and special, cut crystal glasses were stored. His
nose and feet were so cold they were numb; perhaps a drink would restore circulation and make him feel warmer. He was well aware that the warmth that came from liquor was a false, fugitive thing, but he wanted the comfort of it just now, and the pain-deadening effects that would ease his aching joints.

His valet entered, impeccable and correct in his livery of black and
purple, just as Melles poured himself a small glass of potent,
doubly-distilled brandy. The liquor gleamed in the glass with the deep
glow of fine rubies, as Melles held it up to the light, admiring its
color. The valet waited until Melles acknowledged his presence with a
nod before speaking. "His Imperial Highness has called a Court, Lord
Heir," the man said smoothly, one arm already draped with a suit of
court robes in anticipation of the fact that Melles would need them.

"Would you care to change your clothing here, or in your more private
quarters?" Melles sighed. This was the last thing he needed right now;
he was tired and cold, and really wanted a moment or two to warm up and
rest before he dealt with another crisis. But Bors Porthas would not
have interrupted his working hours if this had been some bit of social
nonsense; no, this must be something serious, and he had better steel
himself to meet it.

"Here will do." No one was going to walk in on him unannounced, and
Porthas, bland, self-effacing, incredibly competent Porthas, would have
brought everything Melles would need with him. The balding little man
with the thin, expressionless face was a miracle of efficiency, but that wasn't too surprising. He'd had plenty of practice in more demanding service before Melles retired him to this, his own retinue. In fact, there were a great many of the higher nobles of the Court who would have recognized Porthas' face as that of their own valued personal servant, forced by sudden illness to retire...  A fair percentage would have been shocked into speechlessness, and a few would have gone pale, recalling that they had sent floral tokens to the funeral of this particularly faithful servant.

Porthas looked remarkably healthy for a man who had been dead at least
three times, and rendered forever incapable of leaving a bed on another
five occasions. He looked ageless, in fact, and Melles was aware that
not only could Bors Porthas perform every possible duty that would be
asked of a valet, he could also still meet and beat many men younger
than he in a bout of swordsmanship. As for his other talents-he was the
only person Melles would entrust with certain jobs besides himself. That trim body was as efficient as the mind that was housed in it, and just as lithe.

Melles sometimes wondered if, after all the years of serving as Melles'
agent, the life of a "mere" valet was stultifying. But then again,
Porthas was no "mere" valet, any more than Melles was a "mere" courtier; he was the coordinator for all of Melles' agents, in the city, outside of the city, and most importantly of all, within Crag Castle. He and Melles alone knew the real names and identities of all of Melles' agents. And in the rare event that Melles would need to have a "removal" performed with precision and absolute secrecy, if he could not for some reason perform it himself, he would entrust it to Porthas.

There was no one else besides he who was anywhere near Melles in level
of expertise at their mutual profession.

And he actually seemed to enjoy being a valet. Perhaps, after all his
other activities, serving as a valet was restful and amusing.

He was certainly nimble enough at assisting Melles into the cumbersome
court robes he despised. In sartorial matters, Porthas was not Melles'
equal; he was Melles' acknowledged superior, and Melles was only too
happy to give way to his expertise. When the last fold and crease had
been arranged to Porthas' liking, Melles thanked him-without overdoing
it, but making sure that the man knew that his service was noted and
valued. With a smile of satisfaction, Porthas gathered up the discarded
garments and retired to Melles' private chambers.

The long walk down the castle corridors, accompanied by the silent and
ever-present Imperial Guards, allowed him to rid himself of some of his
irritation. He knew that there was something in the air when he entered
the Throne Room; nervous whispering did not cease at his entrance, as it often did, and the Iron Throne itself was vacant.

Melles made his way up to the foot of the Throne and his own proper
place as First in the Court. General Thayer was already in attendance,
with a frown on his face that told Melles he had no more idea than
anyone else why the Emperor had called this particular Court into
session. The General was also in full regalia, ceremonial breastplate
gleaming over the somber livery of Imperial Army full-dress uniform, his ceremonial helm with its jaunty crest of purple horsehair tucked under his left arm, from which position he could fling the useless piece of pot-metal at a would-be attacker while he pulled his not-so-ceremonial sword with his right hand. On one occasion, the General had actually stopped his attacker with the helmet before the man ever came within reach of his sword.

"Have you heard anything?" he asked Melles under his breath. Melles
shook his head, and the General swore several pungent oaths, his face
darkening. "I don't like this," he said.

"Charliss never used to call full Courts without notice. He's been
closeted with a messenger or an informant-and now he calls a full Court. He's not acting rationally anymore, and the Hundred Little Gods only know what he can inflate out of tiny rumors. If he's heard something-"

"It won't be about us," Melles said smoothly. "We are proceeding
splendidly, and the law-abiding citizens of the Empire are very happy
with us, and with the Emperor. Look at the reports-look at the streets!
And he signed every law, edict and change to procedure we've instituted
with his own hands.

Whatever he has heard, it will concern someone else's activities, and
not ours." At just that moment, Emperor Charliss appeared, draped in his own ceremonial robes, moving slowly toward the Iron Throne flanked by two of his guards, with four more following.

Melles was shocked at his appearance, although he doubted that anyone
other than a highly trained Adept would notice the level of
deterioration in Charliss' protections and rejuvenation magics. It only
showed in small things-in the careful way that Charliss moved, and in
the signs of pain and illness around his mouth and eyes-but it was very
clear to him that Charliss was losing his personal battle against age
and the mage-storms. And as Thayer had said, only the Hundred Little
Gods knew what that deterioration was doing to his mind.

In the past, the Emperor's mind had been the very last thing to go; all
of the Emperor-Adepts had died with their minds clear even as their eyes closed for the last time. But that was in the past, with magic working properly; what if the reverse was happening, and Charliss' mind was decaying faster than his body? What if the poisons of age were pouring into his brain, acting like insidious drugs on his thinking processes?

The Emperor surveyed his Court with cold eyes, then placed himself in the chill embrace of the Iron Throne, and regarded his assembled Court again, as if searching for signs of insurrection. Finally he gestured, and a single, weatherbeaten man in the garb of an Imperial soldier stepped out from behind the screen of guards, moving down the stairs to stand below the Iron Throne.

"One of Our agents has returned from the west," the Emperor rasped. "And meanwhile, there have been petitions and questions brought before this throne. Some among you doubt the wisdom of Our declaring a second heir, saying that the rumors concerning the Nameless One are only that, and that We should wait until We had real proof before We acted. We have brought you all here to witness this report, so that you may see that the Emperor rules over you because he is wiser than you." The man
stepped forward, went on one knee before the Throne, and began reciting
a report in a dispassionate and unaccented voice. His report was
virtually identical to everything that Melles already knew, and he
didn't pay a great deal of attention to it. Granted, he had not realized that Tremane had looted the Imperial supply depot in Fortallan quite so thoroughly-the man had practically taken the very walls of the place, and Melles had to give him credit for the sheer audacity of the
undertaking-but it was still hardly what he would call news. Charliss
himself had known all of this; he'd made it public when he'd declared
Melles as his new heir, and there should have been nothing in these
words to cause the Emperor to feel the need to call a formal Court just
so everyone could hear it.

In fact, there was something odd about the fact that Charliss felt the
need to address the petitions and questions of Tremane's few friends in
the Court. Charliss had always ignored such voices of dissent in the
past. It wasn't at all like the Emperor to behave in such a fashion,
anymore than it was normal for him to sit and listen to a report he'd
already heard several times over. Nevertheless, Charliss was clearly
agitated by what he heard. and grew more so with every word the agent
recited.

Then the man reached the part of his report that was actually new
information-a speech that Tremane had allegedly given to his troops, the contents of which were very clearly treasonable. Melles was fairly
certain that the speech was aecurately reported, in no small part
because the agent kept referring back to notes he had taken, held in a
small book that he took from his belt-pouch.

Melles paid very close attention to that speech, once he realized this
was the reason that Charliss was so agitated. As the man spoke, the
Emperor's hands clutched the arms of the throne, and he leaned forward
with his eyes narrowed, cold rage in every nuance of his posture. This
was a problem; the old Charliss would never have betrayed the fact that
something angered him, but this was not the old Charliss. If the Emperor lost his temper violently in public, it was possible that his competence might be called into question. If that happened, his choice of Heir might also come under fire. The last thing that Melles needed right now was a Court on the verge of deposing the Emperor and finding a new and more tractable Heir.

Supposedly, Tremane accused the Emperor of violating his own sacred
oaths to the Army. He accused Charliss of being the one who created the
mage-storms, as a mad experiment in weaponry of mass destruction. He
told his troops that Charliss deliberately sent them all out to be left
in the area of effect of this new weapon, just to see what would happen
to them.

He claimed that Charliss had then deserted all of them, leaving them to
face mage-storms. and hostile enemy troops on their own, with no
supplies, no pay, and no reinforcements.

Lastly, he declared that they would have to make their own way, for the
Empire no longer cared what became of them.

A strong speech, and one that Tremane might well have believed himself.
Certainly, with no clear source for the magestorms, one could make a
case for them coming from the Empire rather than the insignificant
little nation of Valdemar.

Given that the Empire had centuries of tradition of magic use, and
Valdemar, so far as anyone knew, had none, it would be far more logical
to assume that combat-mages within the Empire had originated the
mage-storms. In fact, if Charliss had actually possessed such a weapon,
he might very well have used it in exactly the way he was accused. The
Emperor was guilty of such callousness so often that a great part of his anger might stem from the fact that he had been accused when for once he was actually innocent.

Then the agent dropped real news, rather than just relating a speech. By working a team of mages together, his group had managed to get a clean scrying on Tremane until the last mage-storm had passed through. They had proof, besides the speech, of Tremane's perfidy. He had made common cause with Valdemar and her allies against the Empire. He had joined the Alliance, and would soon be crowned the new king of Hardorn, the land he was supposed to have taken for Charliss.

And one of the stipulations that the Hardornens had insisted on was that he and his men, Imperial soldiers, would defend Hardorn against any further attempts by the Empire to invade and conquer their land.

It was at this point that Charliss exploded with fury, halting the
recitation in mid-sentence.

Melles and Thayer exchanged a startled glance, for neither of them had
ever seen the Emperor react in this uncontrolled a fashion. And the
moment that the Emperor paused for breath-which was, thanks to his poor
physical condition, after no more than a dozen rage-filled words-they
both stepped up onto the dais and flanked him.

"I will handle Tremane, Lord Emperor," Melles said before Charliss could start again. "That is why you chose me, and believe me, he will live just long enough to regret his actions."

"And I will deal with the traitors who decided to cast their lot in with him," Thayer rumbled. "They are Imperial soldiers under my command, and as such, they will be executed by Imperial hands." Charliss looked up at them both, face still contorted with rage, and started to rise.

Melles again exchanged glances with Thayer, and nodded at the side door
that led from the dais to the Imperial quarters. Melles moved his head in agreement, and each of them took one of Charliss' arms to help him to his feet.

"The Emperor wishes to confer with us as to the appropriate punishment
for these traitors," Melles proclaimed, as they got Charliss up and
standing between them. It wasn't a good answer, but it was better than
saying nothing, and far better than letting the courtiers make something up for themselves.

Before Charliss could say anything else, they had him moving, and once
they had him started in the right direction, he continued until he was
back in his austere, gray marble, high-ceilinged, private chambers.
Wisely, the guards did not hinder them, perhaps because they knew that
if Charliss went into a spitting, foaming rage in public, it would not
do anyone any good except the rumor mongers.

Once Melles and Thayer got Charliss into a seat, however, the temper
tantrum they had prevented from occurring in public broke out in
private.

Charliss hissed, spat, pounded the arms of his white-leather chair, and
probably would have thrown things if he'd had the strength to rise.
Flecks of foam dotted his withered lips, and the pupils of his eyes were dilated. The guards stood at the door, eyes straight ahead, pretending to be deaf.

Most of what he babbled was incoherent, and it was painfully clear that
Charliss had completely lost control of his formidable temper and of his ability to think. If it had not been for the fact that he was so angry he couldn't even control his voice, his shouts would have informed everyone in Crag Castle just how out-of-control he actually was.

But between his rage and his physical state, his voice didn't get much
above a hoarse growl, and much to Melles' relief, he also could not get
out of his chair to pace-or to destroy the contents of his chamber, as
he had once or twice in the past decades. He could only beat impotently
on the padded arms of the chair as he cursed Tremane's name and lineage
back to the days of the First Emperor.

He and Thayer took turns trying to soothe the Emperor with promises of
personal revenge and Imperial justice, not that any of those promises
had any likelihood of being fulfilled.

The agent had made it quite clear that there were no more "loyal"
Imperials with Tremane's troops; for one reason or another they had all
defected over to him. The only way to get at Tremane now would be to
send a magical assassin-and that would take the combined abilities of
several mages. In light of all of the other pressing needs there were
for the little magic that could be made to function, a magical assassin
would be an extremely stupid thing to waste time and energy on.

While it was Thayer's turn to distract the Emperor, Melles sent one of
the guards for his physicians, and looked around for something that
might serve to blunt the Emperor's anger--or at least anesthetize him.
This was a fairly public room, filled with gray or white-leather chairs
arranged in small groups, with a white desk of bleached wood that was
too clean to be used very often off in a corner, and rugs made of
bleached sheepskin scattered about on the white-marble floor. There was
a sideboard of gilded gray marble to Melles' right that was even more
impressive than the one in Melles' rooms; it was loaded down with
crystal decanters of liquors he recognized and those he did not. What,
in the name of the Hundred Little Gods, would a drink as yellow as a
buttercup or as blue as a berry taste like? Or one as green as new
spring grass?

Or did he really want to know?

Probably not. If Charliss was used to entertaining the minor rulers of
his possessions here, he would probably keep a stock of every vile
concoction that every pelt-wearing barbarian ever invented in the name
of "something to drink." Over the years, Melles had sampled a few of
these, and he was not eager to renew his acquaintance with any of them.
There were some things man was not meant to know--or imbibe.

By carefully sniffing the necks of each of the likely bottles, he found
a decanter of the same potent brandy he himself had been drinking when
the formal Court had been called. He poured a much larger portion than
he would ever have drunk himself, and took it to the Emperor.

Charliss seized it in a clawlike hand and downed it without even blinking then threw the glass across the room, where it hit the wall and shattered, leaving sparkling shards and a few ruby-red drops of bloodlike liquid on the white floor.

Melles raised an eyebrow at Thayer, who shook his head.

Evidently the General figured he had the situation in hand and didn't
need to turn the Emperor over to Melles just yet.

Melles nodded, got another two glasses of the wine, kept one for himself and brought the other to Thayer. Then he stood back until Thayer needed him.

His enforced idleness gave him plenty of time to think about the
Imperial agent's report. Tremane had shown more intelligence and
initiative than Melles would ever have given him credit for and on the whole, Melles was impressed. He would never have gotten the troops to stand by him, if he had not come up with a story to convince them that it was the Emperor who had deserted them. It was an adept use of polarity.

And to somehow manage to make peace with the Alliance and convince the
very people he had been fighting against to make him their new ruler-well, that was nothing short of a miracle. Melles would have given a great deal to know how Tremane had managed that particular feat.

Despite the fact that he hated Tremane with an unholy passion and would
happily have seen him slowly drawn and quartered over the course of a
lengthy dinner, Melles knew that in Tremane's position he would have
done exactly the same things. For all the faults that Tremane had,
stupidity wasn't one of them. He wasn't as brilliant as Melles, but he
was not stupid either. He was lucky, though, and he had used all of the
facts he had to make some reasonable conclusions. Melles had access to
all the Imperial records, and he knew for a fact that Charliss had not
given Tremane support or orders for months before the looting of the
Imperial depot. Once Tremane's magics began to fail, he would have found himself fighting an unsupported war in unfamiliar territory~ surrounded by enemies.

He would have had no advantage over the enemy without magic to help. By
the time the winter storms began, it would have been impossible to
retreat across country to the Empire.

So just what did Charliss expect Tremane to do at that point?

Die in place, like a loyal fool out of the old Chronicles? Men like that had gone extinct in the days of the First Emperor, probably because they kept doing stupidly loyal things that bought them early graves. Charliss could not have concocted a better scheme to get rid of Grand Duke Tremane if he'd tried-except, of course, if he had appointed Melles to do away with him.

Not that Melles would have minded at all if Tremane had been such a
loyal fool, but the fact was that he was loyal, like most men, only to a point. And after that point, he saw no reason to repay betrayal with
more loyalty. And his luck must be phenomenal, for he had managed to
pull an amazing victory out of a well that looked to hold only the
bitter water of defeat.

But then, Tremane always had been unaccountably, inexplicably lucky.
Fortune always smiled on the man and doubled the effects of his adequate competence. That was part of the reason why Melles hated him.

The liquor had enough effect on Charliss to get him to stop babbling; he still pounded the arms of his chair, but now he focused on Thayer,
detailing the excruciating punishments he wanted Tremane and his men to
endure before they died.

Thayer did not bother to point out that Tremane and his men were quite
out of reach of any Imperial punishments; he simply nodded gravely,
pretending to pay attention, when in fact he was probably just hoping
that Charliss' Healers would arrive before the Emperor erupted into
incoherence again. Finally the physicians did arrive, and in a moment
they had taken over from Thayer, swarming over the Emperor, pressing
medicines on him, urging him to calm himself. Since Charliss, energy had been fading as the strong dose of liquor took effect, he was finally ready to listen to advice, to take those medicines, to allow his servants to take him to his bedroom and put him to bed. Thayer and
Melles took the opportunity then to make their escape.

Thayer was in no mood to talk. "I was dragged away from writing out
orders for troop movement in the provinces," he told Melles brusquely.
"And I need to get those orders out, whether or not Emperor Charliss has other duties he needs me for." Melles nodded, hearing and understanding the things that Thayer had not said. It would be best to get as many orders out as possible, quickly, while Charliss was otherwise occupied. It was all too clear that the Emperor was no longer entirely sane or stable. The problem was not that he was disintegrating; Melles and Thayer between them could very easily take over if he dropped dead this very night. The real problem was that he was not disintegrating fast enough.

Until he either abdicated or died, the Imperial Guards would make sure
he remained the Emperor; that was their duty, and not only were they
trained and sworn to it, they were geased to it. He would not be the
only Emperor to have gone mad in the last few months of his life; the
Empire had survived such rulers before, and truth to tell, with the
difficulties facing the Empire now, being ruled by a madman was the
smallest of its problems. At the moment, his obsessions were harmless
enough. As long as he insisted on pursuing the twin goals of the
destruction of Valdemar and the punishment Of Tremane, Melles would be
perfectly content. If all that happened was an occasional interruption
of work, it would be a small price to pay to have the Emperor harmlessly occupied and out of the way of real business. Charliss was an Adept, and he did have an entire corps of mages who answered only to his demands-and it was entirely possible, if he decided to sacrifice all attempts to keep his anti-senescence magics working, that he could find some way to destroy Tremane, Valdemar, or both. Granted, such powerful magics would probably kill him and most of his mages, but that was to be expected, and it wouldn't bother Melles in the least. He did not intend to worry about anything as far beyond practical reach as Tremane, and Valdemar was even farther than that.

The real danger to Melles and all he needed to accomplish was that
Charliss might recover his senses and his priorities enough to decide to meddle in what Melles had planned. That would mean nothing short of
disaster, for the Emperor had his own nets of agents and spies that
rivaled the ones Melles had in place, and he would know very soon just
what Melles was doing, overtly and covertly. Most of it, of course, was
simply good strategy, but there was that tiny fraction designed to make
Charliss into a villain and Melles into a hero, and Charliss would
probably not care too much for that.

Charliss would also have his own plans-which would not be a bad thing,
if the Emperor was still sane. But he wasn't and the situation was only
going to get worse as time went on. If he began to meddle, he could
easily undo everything that Melles and Thayer had worked so hard to
establish.

Something would have to be done to keep that from happening.

All that flashed through Melles's mind as he stood in the frigid hallway with General Thayer. He nodded slowly. "We both have work to do," he replied. "We need to get our structure too solidly in place to dislodge by any force." That was an innocuous enough statement, but a brief flicker of his glance toward the closed door of the Emperor's quarters brought an answering glimmer of understanding to Thayer's eyes.

"Jacona's under control," Thayer replied. "It's the rest of the Empire
that we need to think about now. And with your permission, I'll get to
my part of it."

Melles clapped him on the shoulder. "And I to mine; after all, what is the Empire but soldiers and civil servants of various rank?" The General nodded in agreement, and the two of them went their separate ways; Melles hurried his steps to his own apartments with the determination to get enough in place that no matter what mad schemes
Charliss came up with, it would make no difference.

He returned to his suite to find the ever-attentive Porthas waiting,
ready to remove the uncomfortable court robes and replace them with
loose, fur-lined lounging robes and sheepskin slippers. When he raised
an eye at that, Porthas shrugged.

"I assumed that my lord would be working late into the night and would
not wish to be disturbed. I had arranged for a meal to be brought here,
and declined invitations on my lord's behalf for a card party and a
musical evening." Even as Porthas spoke, he assisted Melles out of the
heavy over-robe.

The moment that Porthas mentioned the card party and "musical
evening"-the latter of which would probably be some idiot's wife,
unmarried sisters, and unbetrothed daughters, all performing popular
ballads with varying degrees of success-he shuddered. The card party
wouldn't have been much better; when he played cards, he played
seriously, and it would be a dead certainty that he would have been
paired with an unattached female who either bet recklessly or was too
timid to make a bid.

"You were correct, Porthas," he replied, as the valet eased him into the comfort of loose robes heated on a rack in front of the fire. "And I do have a great deal of work to do." Charliss' actions today had given him the spur that he needed to make some fairly bold moves. That long report on the state of the rest of the Empire had left him with uncertainty earlier, but it was clear now that he had no time to waste.

First, the Empire; second, the Court. Thayer would have no part to play
in that second act of consolidation.

He sat down behind his desk, and pulled paper and pen toward him. As he
had already anticipated, local leaders throughout the Empire had already secured their immediate territories wherever possible. In places where the situation had not yet been secured, he had only to expand his existing arrangements, and he wrote out those orders first. The drafts would go to Thayer before they went to the clerks for copying, just to make certain that they weren't going to step on each others' feet, but the plans were simply extensions of what was already going on around Jacona.

Porthas placed a cup of hot mulled wine at his elbow; the fragrance of
the spices in it drifted to his nostrils. He reached absently for it and sipped it, holding it with one hand while he wrote with the other.

The real challenges would come in dealing with those local leaders,
people who had made themselves the top wolf in their own little
territories, and would not care to hear from a bigger, tougher wolf than they were. Somehow he would have to persuade them that he had authority and power, perhaps in excess of what he really had, and that it was in their best interest to begin taking orders from him.

If he couldn't achieve that objective, he was going to have to eliminate them without direct confrontation, and put someone more amenable to authority in their places.

He put the cup down, out of the way, while he contemplated his options.

The real trick would be to get rid of them in ways that would not be
traced back and connected with him. Getting rid of people was never
difficult. It was doing so without leaving any tracks or signs pointing
to who was responsible that was the hard part. Those clever, perceptive, and skilled enough to trace blame were few but devastating, and all plans had to be made with the assumption that such a sleuth would be investigating, though the odds were slim.

As with cards, duels, and death sports, look at the odds-but consider
the stakes.

He picked up the report, leafed through it, and scanned the list of
those local leaders and their brief dossiers again; his agents were
good, and it was possible to get some idea of who would cooperate and
who would not just from the thumbnail sketches of their personalities
that had been provided to him.

He had a short list of assassins to chose from, "special agents" who
were adept at making deaths look like accidents or illness.

It was going to be difficult to get them into place, given the current
conditions, but it would not be impossible. With the help of the Army,
he ought to be able to get any individual to the right location within a few weeks.

It would probably be a good idea to place his best agents on his most
likely targets immediately, rather than waste time attempting to
persuade some provincial idiot with an over blown sense of his own
competence. If the blow came before he even contacted a given fool, it
definitely wouldn't be connected with him that would leave the agent
free to take on a second target if a at persuasion of someone worth
saving failed. He switched ink and paper, to the special colors of
both that would tell these operatives that he had a job for them. The
note he sent would be commonplace greetings, of course; no special agent would ever trust primary instructions that came written. This was a gamble on his part, for many of these people were free-lance workers.
When they heard what he had to say, they might even turn him down;
although they would be paid more for these targets than any of them had
ever gotten for a job before, getting to their targets through the
miserable conditions that existed now could be a real problem. And
again, that was the privilege of an agent who was as good as these were; you couldn't persuade an artist to make a masterpiece by standing him in front of an easel and threatening him with death. It might be possible to pick off one or two of these provincial leaders with ordinary assassins, and if he came up short on the number of agents he needed, that was what he would do.

But he really would prefer it if all of these operatives found the jobs
enough of a challenge to take them on. They were very good. He, above
all, should know; he used to be one of them, as did Porthas, and he had
even trained some of them in technique.

There was nothing like being able to call on old school ties... As he
wrote out his list of "invitations, it occurred to him that he
actually did have a way to fulfill the Emperor's demands and "bring
Tremane to justice," provided that the "justice" came in the form of a
swift, sure blade or the sharp bite of poison. There were three of these assassins-four, if he counted Porthas, though he did not intend to do without that worthy's talents right here, who could and possibly would go to Hardorn and eliminate Tremane. Magical assassination being out of the question, physical assassination would take a year or more, but it could be done.

He paused to consider it, even though the idea did not appear to be a
particularly good one. There was a certain amount of personal
satisfaction to be had if he could somehow kill Tremane. How had the man managed to wheedle his way into the hearts and minds of the Hardornens? It did not seem fair that his old enemy should come through a situation that should have destroyed him, only to be made a King. Granted, he would never see his home again, and granted, Melles was going to be an Emperor, not a mere King. Nevertheless, the prospect was galling. It would have been satisfying to bring him down altogether.

Porthas took away the cup, and left a fresh one and a plate of sliced
fruit, bread, and cheese in its place. This was a subtle hint that he
should eat something. He took the hint, and ate without tasting any of
it.

He weighed all the considerations. Given that the agent sent out would
be brilliant, crafty, and given every resource, the likelihood of anyone from the Empire reaching the center of Hardorn was remote. Success would be remoter still, for an agent of the Empire, without the magical aids that would enable him to study the people and conditions surrounding his target, would be operating blind in a foreign land. He would stick out like a single red fish in a school of green fish.

In a way, it was possible to sympathize with the Emperor's obsession.
Tremane should be dead at this point. Normally, he did not give in to
his own emotions, but there was a sick anger in the bottom of his
stomach that twisted and bit as if he had swallowed a viper, and it
would probably never give him rest. He wanted Tremane dead, and he
wanted to do whatever it would take to get him there.

But even when he had been an operative himself, he had known that there
was a point past which it was inadvisable to pursue your target, no
matter what your employer said or offered. This was one of those times.

He got up from his desk and poured himself another drink, ignoring for
the moment the cup of mulled wine; not brandy this time, but a thick
cordial with no alcohol in it, made entirely of syrup and
stomach-soothing and gut-deadening herbs.

He went back to his seat, let himself down into the embrace of the
chair, and tried to convince his heart of what his head knew were facts.

When the enemy is "dead" to the world one inhabits, he might as well be
dead in totality.

That was something his teacher had told him, and it was as true now as
it was then. Tremane might as well be dead; his lands and possessions
were confiscated, his name erased from the records, and he could never
return here again. He would have to be content with a petty kingdom in a land of barbarians.

Pursuit of Tremane was a waste of resources, which were in very short
supply, especially good operatives. There was no point in wasting a man
who could serve Melles better elsewhere.

It was time to bury the past vendettas with Tremane's name. There was no point in following the Emperor into madness.

Every time a mage-storm washed over them, anyone with any pretensions at being a magician felt it; there had even been clever daylight robberies timed to coincide with the onset of a mage-storm, when the owner of a building would be incapacitated. The Storms were bad enough when they came during the daylight hours, but when they occurred at night, when everyone was asleep, they were worse, for they became part of one's dream and turned those dreams into nightmares.

Melles woke up in a sweat, clutching his blankets, out of a nightmare of tumbling through empty space. But the waking reality was no better, and he hung onto his bedding with grim recognition of what was behind the dream. Complete disorientation, nausea, the feeling that he was on the verge of blacking out and yet could not have the relief that
unconsciousness would bring-this was a mage-storm to him, and he was
profoundly grateful that Porthas and his guards were not mages and did
not feel these effects.

At that, his own bouts with the Storms were not as bad as those of some
of the other mages he knew, though he had not ventured to ask the
Emperor how he weathered these things.

He had a theory that the amount a mage suffered was directly
proportional to the amount of magic he had tried to work in the interval between the Storms. If magic was tied to its caster, and the Storms disrupted magic, it stood to reason that when the Storms hit, they would give trouble to mage and magic together. As a consequence, he had tried to keep from working any magic at all, even giving up his own rejuvenation magics when they had not survived disruption.

When the Storm finally passed, and his dizziness and nausea vanished as
they always did, he let go of the covers and tried to relax back into
his goosedown mattress. With any luck, the Emperor would be "indisposed" today after his bout with the storm, and with further luck, the mage-storm would send his mental and physical state plummeting again. It was too much to hope that the Storm had killed him, but it was certainly possible that this time he might wind up bedridden.

That would be an excellent thing, for then Melles would have to stand
proxy and speak for him. It might even be possible to frighten him into
stepping down and making Melles the Emperor. He would not hope for it,
and he would not urge it, for the Emperor might well take such
suggestions very badly.

It was a fine dream, though, and one he was loath to give up.

He closed his eyes and tried to relax in hope of resuming his slumbers,
but it was of no use. He could not get back to sleep again. He opened
his eyes and stared up at the canopy of his bed, or rather, at the
darkness within the sheltering curtains of the bed. No light penetrated
those thick velvet curtains, nor would it until morning, when the
servants pulled back both window and bed curtains to wake him. Now that
there was no magical way to heat Crag Castle, one needed those heavy
curtains around the beds to keep the drafts out, just as one needed
goosedown comforters and featherbeds, and many blankets. Even then, he
often woke with a cold nose.

He was not a heavy sleeper, nor a long one, and never had been. Some
would say that a guilty conscience kept him awake, or the memories of
all of his victims, but the truth was simpler than that. Sleep, in his
profession, was a dangerous necessity, the one time when he was
completely vulnerable and had to entrust his safety to others. He had
trained himself to wake completely at the slightest disturbance, and
once he was awake, his mind leaped into activity whether or not there
was any need for it. Once he was that wide awake, it was difficult to
get back to sleep again.

He wondered what time it was. If it was near enough to dawn, it was
hardly worth fighting to get back to sleep only to be awakened again.

He shifted his weight, and a scent of pungent herbs filled the still
air. Porthas had ordered the servants to add those herbs to the bedding, in anticipation of problems when the vermin-repelling spells failed. That was yet another example of Porthas' foresight; he'd seen some of the Councillors scratching surreptitiously at the last meeting of the Grand Council, and suspected fleas, since these were some of the same courtiers who kept dogs or other pets and insisted on having them here at Court. Vermin spread, with or without pets to spread them, unless one took precautions.

Fleas at Court! Well, they were not the only bloodsucking vermin here,
only the most honest about it. In some ways, Melles would have preferred fleas to some of the other vermin he had to deal with on a daily basis.

That led his thoughts immediately to the current problem facing him: the Court. He had always known there would be some opposition to him as the Emperor's Heir, but he had not thought that all of his enemies would forget their own differences to unite against him.

His only solid ally was Thayer; in Thayer he had the Army-but not the
Imperial Guards. Those were answerable only to the Emperor, and led by
Commander Peleun, who was not a great admirer of Melles. How Peleun had
managed to climb to the heights he had while still retaining a fair
number of illusions about honor and fidelity was quite beyond Melles,
but he had, and he was already causing some trouble. He didn't care for
the idea of a former chief assassin as an Emperor although Melles was
following in a long and distinguished, if not openly acknowledged,
tradition. He had preferred Tremane, who at least pretended to honesty,
and had a fine career in both the civil service and the military behind
him.

More important than Peleun, however, was Councillor Baron Dirak, who was in charge of the Imperial Civil Servants.

He had been one of Tremane's staunchest allies, still defended him
openly at Court, and was not at all pleased with Melles' rise to power.
He'd had some hope of wedding a sister to Tremane, and was very bitter
about losing that chance to Power.

Either of these men alone could have caused him some small difficulty,
but with both of them allied, things could become serious. And if his
sources were correct, they were maneuvering to get Councillor Serais,
head of the tax collectors, into their corner.

He had to consolidate his power in the Court. There were other
candidates for the Iron Throne, many of them just as qualified as
Melles. It was entirely possible that someone could send an assassin out after Melles. Peleun probably would be horrified at the thought, but Dirak would consider it, and there were others who knew how to contact the same I list of "special agents" that Melles used. Melles hadn't been able to contact them all, and that meant there were at least a few top-level assassins unaccounted for. Peleun could use his power as the head of the Imperial Guard to allow anyone he wished in to see the Emperor at any time, and given the right set of circumstances, the end result of such an interview could be a brace of guards arriving to put Melles under arrest. With the Emperor's mind so unbalanced, it wouldn't be too difficult to persuade him that Melles was not enthusiastic enough in his pursuit of Tremane. That alone would be enough to get him arrested and replaced.

If he was arrested, his enemies would have the leisure to concoct as
much evidence as they pleased to prove whatever they wished, and he
would not be able to interfere. It was possible, of course, that Porthas would take up the reins and act in his absence, but Melles preferred not to count on such enlightened self-interest. It was far more likely that Porthas and all of his special employees would offer their services to what they perceived to be the winning side.

He was secure in the city; Jacona was quiet, and entirely his. He had
issued his orders and sent out his assassins and negotiators along with
Thayer's troops; within a few weeks he would know how successful he had
been at taking the rest of the Empire under his rule. Now, while he was
waiting for word from the countryside, would be a good time to
consolidate the Court. That was one thing that his enemies never counted on; that he would continue to work on another aspect of his projects while waiting for results from the previous phase. They always started on a phase and waited to see what would happen before going on to the next, but that was a costly way to operate.

As for the Court-he would order no assassinations, at least not yet, and only use it as a last resort. If anyone died in the next few weeks, even if it was completely an accident he would be the first to be suspected of initiating foul play. But he had always used the knife as a tool, not an end, and the skills that had made him the Emperor's most successful agent included blackmail, information brokering, and-of course rumor creation. He didn't need to kill anyone to be effective.

It was more effective to keep a small but omnipresent fear of death in
peoples' minds than to actually deliver the blow itself.

Peleun, Dirak, and Serais; he would concentrate on those three, who were outwardly his enemies. The little fish were probably waiting to see who came out the victor, and the bigger fish, the equals of those three, had not yet openly taken sides.

Peleun's weakness was his fortune, or rather, his lack of one; he didn't have a solid financial situation and he had been speculating lately in commodities. He had been doing very well, in no small part because he knew just what commodities were going to be in short supply, thanks to his contacts with the Army. The Army, of course, had taken over the Cartage Guild, and although the Army did not own or profit directly from the cargoes carried, there were Army records of what had just come in that Peleun could easily get access to before the goods ever came on the market. Everything had to go through inspection, weighing, and taxation before so much as a grain of wheat could be sold, and that took several days, enough time for Peleun to purchase goods that were going to be scarce before anyone else knew that supplies were going to temporarily dry up until the next cargoes came in. That was a great weakness in the current market situation, for there was no telling what might come in besides staples. There was no way to effectively communicate back to the farms and estates, so at some point, it might be impossible to find an apple, and at another, there was nothing in the way of fruit in the market but apples. All Melles had to do would be to see that Peleun saw the wrong records, or completely falsified records, and within a few weeks he would be a ruined man.

Dirak was a very nervous gentleman, timid and altogether afraid of his
shadow; perhaps that was why he had gone into civil service in the first place. The current situation had him gulping handfuls of calmatives on a daily basis; surely there was something that Melles could do to further destroy his nerves.

And as for Serais----did he but know it, he was the most vulnerable of
all. Some quick work among the Imperial tax records, and hundreds of
thousands of gold pieces that had never existed in the first place would "vanish" from the treasury. Of course, the errors would eventually be uncovered, but it would take a great deal of work and require referring to all the original tax receipts, and Serais' reputation would be completely ruined by the time it was over. With any luck, he was probably skimming a little off the top anyway, and when Melles was through, that would have been uncovered as well.

That wouldn't be enough to keep the Court completely under his thumb,
though. He had to give the malcontents within the Court another target
than himself, just as he had done for the malcontents in the city. It
could not be a target for blame, however, but a target of profit and
reward. It would be very dangerous to blame the Emperor for anything,
and there was no point in spreading rumors accusing anyone else of
wrongdoing, when those rumors might well be turned on him. No, with all
the uneasiness in the Court, offering people hope and profit would be
far more effective.

What would happen when the mage-storms were over?

What, exactly, would the Empire need? How could those courtiers who
remained here profit from the end of the Storms? If he could give them a direction-even an entirely specious direction-that would get them too
busy to concern themselves with him.

Last of all, he and Thayer should work together to at least make his
position look unassailable. Perhaps by tempting one of his three targets to attempt to persuade the Emperor to do something-something that Melles could come out against-something that Melles would know the Emperor would never even consider. Reliable rumors that the Emperor was actually in favor of the given action would spur the target onward. By urging something the Emperor was against, the target would label himself as a troublemaker and potential traitor in the Emperor's eyes.

He smiled to himself. And what better action could there be than urging
clemency for Tremane?

He felt his eyes growing heavier, and his body relaxing. He had a plan.
In the morning he would implement it.

Now he could sleep.

Melles smiled and nodded graciously as one of Viscount Aderin's six
unmarried daughters blushed and dedicated her performance on the
great-harp to him. He watched her attentively which had the effect of
making her fumble her fingerings as she labored through a rendition of an old chestnut entitled "My Lady's Eyes." Musical evenings were the best cure for insomnia that he knew, but attendance at this one was
important. If one was going to plant information, this sort of gathering was the place to do so-a room full of very minor nobility, all of the hungry for advancement, all of them so eager for a crumb from the tables of the great that they would listen to and believe practically anything. They would never divulge where their information originated, in the hope that those they imparted their choice bits to would think that it originated with them and give them credit for enormous cleverness.

And none of them could be directly linked to him. He did not mix with
them socially, except at extremely large gatherings like this one, which he had been urged to attend by the Emperor's Minister of Protocol. He was not related to any of them. No one had any reason to assume that he had any reason to give them information. For all intents and purposes, he was here to survey Aderin's daughters as possible marriage fodder, not to chat with Aderin's friends.

In fact, the girls weren't that bad. Three of the six were discreet and
submissive, able to entertain without embarrassing him, unlikely to try
to put themselves forward, attractive enough to satisfy him, and
tractable enough to smile and ignore any little excess of his own. He
could do worse, and very well knew it. This was probably why the
Minister of Protocol had suggested the gathering, at least in part.
There was some nervousness among the Ministers about the fact that he
was not yet married and showed no signs of wanting that particular
state. There had been a single Emperor in the past who had been
uninterested in the opposite sex, and there had been trouble during his
reign that he could have resolved with a marriage of state but had not
done so. This had eventually led to a costly minor war, and at the
moment, the Empire could not afford a cheap minor war.

Of course, he could always make the ministers happy by doing what the
Sixth Emperor had done. With his reign starting on a shaky note, and
unwilling to offend anyone by picking one girl over another, he had
handpicked the daughter of a mere Squire, a very plain, very quiet
child, and had educated her to be the perfect Empress. She had offended
no one in his Court, because she had deferred to everyone; she had every skill needed in an Empress. Even the fact that she was plain had been valuable, because it was quite clear to everyone that she was the
Emperor's place-holder and hostess, and nothing more. The Emperor had
been able then to appoint dozens of royal mistresses over the course of
his reign, all of them enjoying the same status, and he had threaded his way through many intrigues on the basis of which mistress he chose to favor at any one time.

That might be the best solution of all. And if he had to make a state
marriage eventually, well, the Emperor could divorce his wife and
remarry within a day and a night, and an insignificant place-holder
would have no family to make trouble later. In fact, such a girl would
probably be very happy to retire from Court with a generous settlement.

As he caught himself playing with the various possibilities of such an
arrangement, he sternly brought his attention back to the real reason
why he was here. He was going to plant rumors, and he had better get
about it before people began indulging themselves a little too heavily
in the mulled punch to properly remember what they heard.

Before the evening was over, he had started a whisper-campaign about
Serais and the "missing" tax money, had suggested several lines of
profit to be pursued when the Storms were over, and had hinted that when he was Emperor, those who confined their attention to conservative ideas and relied on "what always worked before" would take second place to those with innovation and creativity. Since these folk were among the lesser nobility, they had less access to rejuvenative magics, and hence the average age here was much lower than for the Court as a whole. Melles knew that the one thing he could do to attract the support of little fish like these was to suggest that he would be more receptive to fresh, new ideas than his predecessor. This indicated that there was room at the top-and that some old, tired titles might find their Council seats and Ministerial offices taken by those who had been languishing in their shadow.

It had been a profitable evening. And in addition, he had managed to
deflect any accusation that he was actually pleased at Tremane's
downfall by pretending to a low level of disappointment in "his old
childhood friend," thus lending another layer of obscurity to his
motives. Now there would be a substantial number of people with the
impression that he and Tremane had been friends for most of their lives
rather than rivals. So when he laid the trail to suggest that the
Emperor might be willing to consider clemency for the Grand Duke, there
would be people ready to believe the suggestion since it came from him.

This very evening, a bright young fellow who'd brought himself to
Porthas' attention by his brilliance with both forgery and "fixing"
account books had been smuggled into the tax office and was ensuring
Serais' downfall. Peleun had invested everything he had to spare, and
some that he did not have, in smoked ham, bacon, and fancy sausage,
certain that the cargo that had just arrived from Tival was frozen fish, not meat. Tomorrow the double caravan of smoked ham, bacon, and fancy sausage that had arrived from Tival would go on the market, and Peleun would be very lucky if he could hold onto his house in the city.

And as for Dirak, well, Melles had something very special in mind for
him. Besides being nervous, Dirak was devout--or perhaps it was better
to say that he was superstitious. He was about to be the recipient of a
great many omens of bad fortune, together with many minor mishaps that
might lend further credence to those omens. If Dirak did not collapse
with nervous exhaustion before the end of a fortnight, Melles would be
very much surprised.

Melles was feeling pleased enough with the way that things were going
that he dismissed Porthas early when he returned to his rooms. Porthas
had been responsible for setting up most of what Melles had planned for
his three enemies, and he was looking a bit worn, at least to Melles'
critical eye. "I can take care of myself for once," he told the man.
"I'm going to work for a few more hours, then go straight to bed."

"I would argue with you," Bors Porthas replied, rubbing his hand across
his eyes, "but I'm too tired. I know my limits, and I've just reached
them." Melles uttered a short bark of laughter. "Good! I was beginning
to think you had no limits, and I was wondering when you were going to
set yourself up as my rival." He was only half joking about that; it was something anyone in his position had to consider.

Porthas snorted. "No fear of that, my lord. You are a target. I am not. To my mind, my position is the better one. Please sleep lightly and put an extra guard on your door, my lord. And don't try to dress yourself until I arrive to select your robes for the day. I do not want a repetition of the day you wore the sapphire tunic with the emerald trews. I would not be able to live down the shame." Melles acknowledged the advice with a wave of his hand, and Porthas bowed himself out.

Since he would be doing without his valet's silent attendance, Melles
set his desk up with everything he might need to work before he ever sat down. A servant would come in to mend the fire, but otherwise he would be left alone at his own orders until he chose to go to bed.

He had been working steadily on follow-up orders for his agents in
Jacona involved with the freedom movement, and similar, but more general orders for similar agents in other cities of the Empire. He had noticed that the room seemed to be getting colder, and had been about to ring for the servant, when the servant finally came in, bearing a metal hod of coal.

He started to turn his attention back to his work, when something about
the young man's posture sounded a mental alarm in his instincts.

He was already out of his chair and had slipped free of the cumbersome
outer robe as he dove toward the floor, when the first knife hit the
back of the chair and stuck there, quivering.

He rolled to his feet beside the fireplace and snatched up a fireplace
poker as the youngster threw a second knife that he dropped down from a
hidden sheath in his sleeve. Melles easily dodged that strike, too, and
his lip curled with contempt.

Arm sheaths-that was a trick for sophomores and sharpsters!

And against him! What kind of fools were they sending after him anyway?

"You might as well hold still, old man," the young one whispered,
pulling another knife from somewhere behind the back of his neck as he
went into a lithe crouch. "You're going to die anyway, so you might as
well make it easier on both of us.

Old man! Who did this young idiot think he was? But the stupid speech-so melodramatic and such a waste of breath-told him the kind of assassin he faced. He had to deal with nuisances like this one at least once a year; youngsters who thought they were better and faster than the old masters, and would use any excuse to take them on. He would have to kill this cretin; he had no choice in the matter. If he didn't make an example of the fool, others like him would think he'd gone soft and keep coming at him. Killing the boy would mean that the others would leave him alone for about another year.

But anger boiled up deep in his gut, and not just because some young
freelancer, ill-trained and without even a nodding acquaintance with
discipline, had decided to show that the master had lost his touch. No,
this boy would never have come here if he had not been brought into the
palace by someone who belonged here. That meant he'd been hired.

And that was an insult that was hardly to be borne. How dared someone
send a rank amateur against him? Did they think his reputation, was
inflated? Did they think he could no longer hold his own against even a
boy like this one?

Were they that contemptuous of him?

They were about to discover that it was not wise to tease the old
basilisk; they would learn that it was only pretending to sleep.

He rushed the boy, startling him into skipping backward; he was used to
the flickering shadows cast by flames instead of mage-lights, but the
boy obviously was not. As he passed his desk, he feinted with the poker
and picked up the tray of sand he used to dry the ink on his documents.
The boy's attention was on the poker, not on Melles' other hand. Before
he could get out of reach, Melles flung the contents of the tray into
his eyes, then threw the tray itself at him. The boy deflected the tray
clumsily with one arm; it hit him and clattered to the floor. He could
not deflect the sand.

So far neither of them had made enough noise to attract the attention of the guards at the door, and Melles had no intention of calling for help. If the guards came, they'd kill the fool before Melles had a chance to find out who had sent him.

Blinded and in pain, the boy still had a few tricks left; with his eyes
watering, he threw the dagger he held at the last place Melles had been
standing, and rubbed at his face with one hand while groping behind his
neck for another blade. Of course, Melles wasn't where the boy thought,
but had dropped down below the level of a thrown blade. He lunged
forward before the boy could register where he was, and swept the poker
out in a savage backhanded blow at knee-height.

He shattered the boy's left kneecap, and the boy went down with a
strangled cry.

"Who sent you?" he hissed angrily, as he stood up slowly, absently
pleased that he was not at all winded. The daily workouts with Porthas
had been more than worth the effort.

The boy responded with a curse about Melles's sexual preferences, rolled out of the way of another blow, and got his fourth knife into his hands at the same time.

"No matter what you've heard, I don't take any pleasure in that
particular pastime," Melles said coldly. By now, his eyes had watered so much that the boy could see again, although his eyes were bloodshot and swollen. Melles was in no mood to take chances, even though he was
facing a partially disabled foe, so he watched the young fool warily.
The boy did not writhe or take his eyes off Melles, though the pain from his shattered knee must have been excruciating. "I suggest you tell me who hired you, and save yourself a great deal of pain." The boy inched away, sliding over the slick floor, while Melles moved cautiously toward him. This time the curse was a bit more colorful and less accurate. Melles sighed, and shook his head, as the boy got into a standing position with the help of a chair. What did he expect to accomplish from there? He couldn't walk; his leg wouldn't hold him. And if he couldn't walk, his balance would be off. Didn't he know that?

Was he so desperate he'd try anything, or did he really think he had a
chance to escape?

Melles backed up, keeping his eyes on the boy at all times, until he
reached his desk. Without needing to look to see where it was, he pulled the boy's first knife out of the back of the chair, weighed it in his hand for a moment to get the balance, and threw it.

It hit precisely as he had intended, in the boy's gut with a wet thud;
the boy dropped to the ground again with a gurgle, unable to twist out
of the way in time, as his own knife clattered to the floor. Perhaps the fool had thought he was going to try for the trickier hand shot. That was stupid of him, if he had. A gut wound hurt more and wouldn't kill immediately.

Melles walked over to the boy and stood looking down at him, with the
poker held loosely in one hand. The boy had both hands on the hilt of
the knife, trying to pull it out, his breath came in harsh pants, and
his eyes were glazing with agony. "Who hired you?" he asked again.

The boy looked up, and spat at him.

He sighed. He was going to have to spend more time than he wanted on
this, squandering time that could have been better spent on his orders,
but there was no help for it. "You're going to tell me sooner or later," he said, without much hope for sense from this arrogant idiot, who still didn't think he was going to die. "You'll be better off with sooner." This time the boy responded with a suggestion for an unpalatable dietary supplement. Melles brought the poker down on his other knee, and proceeded dispassionately to inflict enough pain to extract the information he wanted.

In the end, he managed to get what he wanted without too much of a mess, and the answer made him even more disgusted than he had been at the beginning of the futile exercise.

Duke Jehan. An idiot with just about as little sense as the cretin he'd
hired.

And it was not for any great ideological reason, nor because Jehan was
avenging Tremane, or trying to put one of the other candidates in the
Heir's suite. No, it was because Jehan had somehow gotten the impression that if he managed to assassinate enough candidates, he would manage to be put on the throne because he was Charliss' second cousin!

Apparently he'd thought that if he used assassins to do his work for
him, no one would connect him with the deaths!

Melles had no idea who Jehan thought would get the blame if Melles
himself was gone, but perhaps this would-be King of Assassins had gotten his order of targets reversed and had gone after the last on the list first.

He finished off the mewling thing on the floor with a single thrust of
the boy's own knife, threw the knife down next to the body, and wiped
his hands with a napkin, contemplating his next move. It wouldn't be
enough to make an example of this boy, or Jehan would think he'd gotten
off undiscovered and try some other way of ridding himself of his
rivals. Melles had acquired immunity to most of the common poisons, but
that didn't mean he wouldn't get sick if someone slipped a dose to him.
That would cost still more valuable time, and might incapacitate him
long enough for one of his real rivals to get in to the Emperor. No, he
was going to have to give Jehan a real fright, and make him into an
example for anyone else at Court idiotic enough to try something like
this.

In the end, it took all of his skill to pull the job off-not to get into Jehan's quarters without arousing anyone, but to get past his own
guards. The nurse who was supposed to be watching in Duke Jean's nursery was easily incapacitated with a needle dipped in a poison that sent one into a deep sleep rather than death. Jehan's oldest son, slightly more than a year old, sat up in his crib and looked with wide eyes at the stranger who came to lift him out and place him on the floor.

He didn't do anything more than babble, though, when the stranger gave
him several pretty toys to play with.

Melles dropped the body, wrapped in a bloody sheet, into the crib in
place of the child, and left the child himself sitting on the floor,
happily absorbed in the bladeless daggers that had been intended to kill Melles.

That was a somewhat melodramatic gesture in and of itself, but Melles
had the feeling that anything less wouldn't get Jehan's attention. He'd considered leaving the daggers whole rather than snapping the blades off, but if the baby was as stupid as its sire, it would probably have managed to kill itself with one of them. While that would have been no loss for the Court or the world, Jehan would have been so overwrought that the lesson would be completely lost on him. And killing babies, or allowing them to be killed, was bad for one's public image.

Melles slipped back across the palace and into his own rooms again,
feeling drained and no less disgusted. He had lost most of the working
hours of the night-and this late, although he had easily gotten the
blood off the stone floor with the sheet, he'd used up all the hot water in his suite to do so.

He'd have to wash himself in cold water; one more mark against Jehan.

He put himself to bed, chilled and angry but at least he was physically
tired enough to sleep.

And hopefully, his little present would prevent Jehan and several others from sleeping for many nights to come. It wasn't much in the way of revenge, for him, but for now it would do.

"Amazing!" Silverfox shook his head and stepped away from the teleson crystal, tossing his long, black hair to one side. "If I had not seen this, I would not believe it was possible."

"I couldn't agree more," Karal said. He had been watching over
Silverfox's shoulder as the kestra'chern spoke with Treyvan.

The round crystal lens mounted on top of the teleson had held a perfect
image of the head and shoulders of the fascinated gryphon, and a thin
but distinct echo of his voice emerged from the matte-gray metal box
that held the crystal cradled in a quarter-moon-shaped depression on its surface.

This was even more impressive than the time An'desha had done
long-distance scrying on Grand Duke Tremane.

This was a distinct improvement over the original sets. A little
fiddling and the addition of the crystals on each set as well as the
mirrors-simple polished lenticular lenses that any glassworker could
make-had made it possible to have images and the audible voices of the
two users. All that had been in the notes that Lyam and Firesong had
interpreted, but the crystals had never been installed. Perhaps that was why the sets had been on the workbench.

Karal gazed wistfully at the device, which was now being used by Sejanes and one of the new Mage-Gifted Heralds.

"This is quite amazing. I wish you didn't have to have Mindspeech to use it."

"But you don't-" Silverfox began. "Or at least only one of you does."
Karal only sighed, very quietly. Silverfox looked at him askance, with a question in his blue eyes, but it was Sejanes who guessed what lay
behind Karal's comment.

"You'd like to use this to speak to that young lady of yours without any of us eavesdropping, wouldn't you, lad?" he said shrewdly. Karal blushed and didn't reply immediately, trying to think of an answer that was noncommittal enough without being an actual lie.

"Well, you need to use it to confer with the others back in Haven," he
said, nodding in the direction of Sejanes, Firesong, and Master Levy.
"That's important."

"And you aren't. Is that what you're saying?" Sejanes graced him with a
skeptical look.

"What you are talking about is important," Karal replied, knowing that
any declaration of how unimportant he was would only be met with a
counterargument. "Idle chatter with Natoli isn't. It's not as if I
really need to hear about what scrapes our friends are getting into, or
who's passed to the back room at the Compass Rose." Sejanes didn't
counter that particular response. Instead, he provided a different
answer. "We won't be using this device all the time. Personally, if
there is a way, I don't see any difficulty with you using it to catch up on news with the young lady." He tilted his head at Firesong, An'desha, and Master Levy in unspoken inquiry. All three of them nodded their heads, completely in agreement with him.

"We all know that you would give it up to one of us if we even looked as if we thought we might want to use it, Karal," An'desha told him. "If you could think of a way that you can make it work without an
eavesdropper, there's no reason why you can't use it, too. It's not as
if you're going to wear the thing out, or use it up." Pish. I can
Mindspeak. And so can Florian." Altra wrapped himself gracefully around
Karal's legs and looked up into his face. "For that matter, so can Need. We certainly wouldn't embarrass you, would we?"

"The Firecat says that he, Need, or the Companion could hold the
connection for Karal," Firesong told all of them.

Karal started to protest, then shut his mouth, realizing that he was
wrong on all counts and he might as well be quiet. The others wouldn't
need to use the teleson all the time, Altra and Florian already shared
most of his secret thoughts so why not these, and there could not be any harm in talking a little to Natoli now and then. His cheeks and the back of his neck grew hot. "As long as you don't mind," he said diffidently.

A snort from Firesong was the only reply to that statement, as a Herald
in the teleson watched and listened with polite interest.

"Shall I see if Natoli can be found later?" the far-off Herald asked.
"If there's no one at the device, one of the Mindspeakers can project to you until Need, the Firecat or the Companion can come hold the
connection." I would think that would be quite satisfactory," Florian
told Karal "And I think you ought to tell him that, so that he can
arrange for Natoli to come as soon as the mages are finished."

"Ah, Florian thinks that would be a good idea," Karal said, trying to
control his blushes. "Thank you." He hurried away to find something to
do before he got himself into any further embarrassing situations.

The most useful thing he could do was to serve in his proper place as a
secretary and right at this very moment the only person who needed the
skills of a secretary was Tarm. The kyree was down in the workroom,
carefully describing everything before Firesong and An'desha took it all to pieces. Lyam had already made scale drawings of each workbench, and now he was making notes while Tarm dictated. He gratefully gave up his place to Karal, even though the notes would now be in Valdemaran rather than Kaled'a'in. Tarm didn't miss a beat, changing his Mindspeech from Lyam to Karal as soon as Karal held the notepad and graphite-stick. Karal rubbed his nose to keep from sneezing; they had stirred up quite a bit of dust just in walking about. It was amazing how much dust found its way down here once the hatchway was open.

"Why are you doing this, sir?" Karal asked, when they completed one
bench and moved on to another. "I'm just curious." "A number of
reasons," the kyree replied pleasantly. "Later, if we are trying to put
together another device, we will know what pieces were laid out on which bench in what order. We will have a historical record of how the
workshop looked if we ever wish to reconstruct it. In this way, if for
some reason the contents of the workbenches are ever jumbled together,
we will know what tool goes with what project. It is not always
intuitively obvious." Karal nodded, and made another note on the
identity of an object. All of that made perfect sense, but it would
never have occurred to him to make such detailed drawings, or to measure the distance an object was from the edge of the bench.

In a case like this, young scribe, records are always important," Tarm
said. "The more, the better. Once anything is moved, it is changed
forever; perhaps that might not be important, but at the moment, we
can't know that. The thing is to make drawings and notes on everything,
and several exact copies of the documents we find: Karal laughed, which
seemed to surprise the kyree. "It is a good thing that Urtho was a neat
man, or you would be copying foodstains, I think, along with diagrams."
The kyree opened his mouth in a wide grin. "It would not be the first
time. I am a mere historian; how am I to know ago spill of wine? what is a diagram and what was a long Perhaps a semicircle of dark brown may not in fact be a ring from the bottom of a mug, but rather a notation of where a teleson lens should go?" Lyam, now freed to go make more of
those exact copies of the documents and notes they had discovered
resting on the benches, trotted up the stairs. Karal had been amazed to
discover just how much he had in common with the little lizard natured,
creature over the past several days. Lyam was good patient,
uncomplaining, and about the same age as Karal. Like Karal when he had
first arrived in Valdemar, Lyam never expected to be anything more than
a secretary. Lyam was probably right, but if anything was to happen to
Tarm, it would be Lyam who would apply the things he learned from the
historian to complete a given task.

Tarm, on the other hand, was a little easier to work for than Ulrich had been, largely because what Tarm wanted and needed were simple things. It was quite possible for Karal to anticipate Tarm's descriptions just by looking at the bench, although Tarm often had a more succinct way of describing something than Karal would have come up with. And Tarm, although he did have an air of quiet authority, was not as intimidating as Ulrich had been. Since he was physically much shorter than Karal, and since he looked like a friendly, shaggy sheep-herding dog, it simply wasn't possible to be intimidated by him, no matter how intelligent and knowledgeable he was. On the other hand, he seemed just a bit wary around Karal, which was not too surprising. The Karsites had a reputation for being extremely insular people, and it would be logical to assume that Karal harbored certain prejudices about fourlegged People." Tarm could not have known about the Firecats, of course; very few people outside of Karse even knew such things existed.

The work went slowly but steadily. Tarm had refused to allow anyone else to carry away anything after Firesong had taken the telesons and their notes. Since there wasn't anything down here that was needed
immediately, the others had given in to his demands with good-natured
humor. Since then, the meticulous description and drawing had been going on every day. Tarm permitted people to remove articles from the benches only after he had finished with them, but since it wasn't always obvious when he was done with a bench, so far no one had moved much of anything.

Now they were down to the final bench, and Tarm seemed very pleased with all that had gone before. This bench was virtually empty except for a few pots of dried-out paint and ink and some brushes and pens. "A
scribe's bench, I would guess," Tarm speculated. "Look at the height of
the stool-how close the inkwell and the pots are to the front of the
bench. Urtho never sat here, I'll wager." I doubt that any human did,"
Karal replied, noting the distances down on the diagram. "This is a
backless stool, where all the other seats are tall chairs, and to me,
that says that whoever used this bench might have had a tail. The seat
tilts slightly forward and has an angled, rounded cut-in toward the
back, so, I'd say it was a hertasi that sat here. Probably Urtho's
personal scribe or secretary." Impressive deduction. I suspect you are
correct," Tarm replied..

And this is good, since it means Lyam can use this bench for his copying work instead of taking an awkward Position on the floor. Well, that is all we need from here. Do run up and tell the others that they can come loot to their hearts' content, would you please? Then if you would, tell Lyam about all of this, and could you help him move his supplies down here?"

Tarm gave the order carefully, phrased as a very polite request, as if
trying to avoid giving insult. Karal would have obeyed him no matter
what his attitude had been, but Tarm probably wasn't taking any chances
about hurting his feelings since they all had to live together in a very crowded environment.

Lyam was very happy to transfer his work from the floor upstairs to the
bench downstairs, and Karal helped him carry his effects. As Karal had
thought, the backless stool was at the perfect height for the little
lizard.

"This will be good," Lyam said, hissing his sibilants a trifle as he
tested the seat. "The stool is perfect." The brushes proved to have
failed to withstand the rigors of time; Lyam examined them, pronounced
them useless for scribing, and added that nothing had changed much in
the art of brushmaking over the centuries. It did give Karal a sense of
awe to hold in his hand something that had last been held so long ago,
but Lyam was right; the brush could have been made last week except for
the fact that the bristles were crumbling.

"I admit to having a special regard for the tools of my trade," Lyam
confided. The paint and ink in the pots were useless as well and were
consigned to part of another bench to await their fate. Lyam and Karal
cleared the top of the scribe's bench and set it up to Lyam's
satisfaction. It did not escape Karal's notice that the graphite-sticks, silverpoint sticks, ink, pens, and brushes that Lyam arranged were in nearly the same places as those that had once served that long-dead scribe. Together they swept and cleaned out the corner, so that there would be no dust or dirt to smudge Lyam's new-made copies.

"Ali!" Lyam finally said with satisfaction, stretching his tail out and
flexing his stubby hand-talons. "This is good, good light, and a good
position! I can be very happy here, I think! Thank you, gesten.

"You're very welcome. Really." Karal paused a moment as it struck him
again, in a moment of astonishment, that he was chatting amiably with
what could be loosely described as an intelligent dog and its lizard
secretary in the ruins of a magic-blasted tower once ruled by a legend.
His musings were interrupted as the lizard secretary held up an ancient
brush so that the tarnished ferrule shone dully in the workshop's light.

"You know, simply by virtue of where this brush has been found, it could be worth enough in trade to feed my family for a season, but its highest value is in what it makes us think of when we see it." The kyree looked over at the hertasi with a look of pure pleasure, saying nothing. Lyam held the old brush reverently in both hands and continued. "An artifact of Urtho's own workshop. This is history itself, Karal, as great as any carved monument or temple. History is in the small items as much as the huge ones. When we see an edifice, we see what the ancients wanted us to see, and that is important, but we find out so much more from what was so familiar to them that they thought little of it. And one day, perhaps historians will look back at our clothes, our brushes, and our everyday things, and learn who we were, too!"

"Now you know why I enjoy Lyam's company so much, Karal. He is truly a brother in spirit!" Tarm's mind-laugh was joyous.

"Oh! I-well. It is easy to be overcome by all of this. It is wonder
itself we are immersed in here," Lyam muttered, embarrassed, as he
gingerly set aside the brush that had been the focus of his oratory.
Karal and Tarm exchanged knowing looks with each other. Even across
time, species, and cultures, the enjoyment of history's "wonder itself"
could be shared.

Karal left Lyam bent over yet another copy of the ancient notes; this
batch seemed to be the jewelry designs. He would have offered to help,
but although his drafting ability was up to making sketches of benchtops and their contents, it was not up to making copies of intricate jewelry patterns.

When he went back upstairs, Tarm came with him, and immediately engaged
himself in conference with Firesong and An'desha over another copied set of notes. Firesong and An'desha were chattering away, with odd breaks in the conversation as they listened to Tarm's Mindspoken replies. Master Levy had replaced Sejanes at the teleson, and was talking to someone Karal did not recognize, but who wore Trainee Grays instead of Herald Whites. Sejanes, who was standing behind Master Levy~ simply watching the conversation, turned at the sound of Karal's footsteps and waved him over.

"I understand from Firesong that you were the Channel for the last
effort here," Sejanes said, when Karal was within earshot.

The old mage looked at him expectantly, motioning him to follow as he
moved away from the teleson and Master Levy s intensely technical
conversation.

Karal nodded, wondering what Sejanes wanted. "Not that I have any idea
of what a Channel is or does, sir," he added. "I'm afraid I put my faith in what I was told, that Channeling is instinctive." He felt very diffident, telling such an experienced mage that he had no idea of what he had been doing.

He hoped that Sejanes wasn't going to be annoyed at him for mucking
about with things he didn't understand.

Sejanes pulled on his lower lip thoughtfully. "That's true in a limited
sense," he finally replied. "You could perfectly well go on that way;
many Channels prefer not to know anything about what causes what they're doing. But there are things that can be learned that would make the experience easier for you, and perhaps less frightening. I could teach you, if you wanted to learn; that's why I asked about it. It could make an important difference in how you feel afterward."

Karal's mouth went dry and he swallowed as a tremor of fear passed through him. How could he tell this old mage that the very last thing he wanted was to have anything to do with more magic? On the other hand, Sejanes seemed to understand how horrible it had been for him, and if there was a next time, wouldn't it he better to undertake it fully prepared? "Well, sir, if I had a choice-I've done it twice, and I'd really rather not ever do it again. But if I have to, anything that would make things easier would probably be a good idea. So I guess I ought to take you up on your offer." The old man chuckled at his lack of enthusiasm and patted his shoulder, as if to reassure him.

"There's no shame in that reaction, he told Karal. "I've never Channeled, myself, but I've spoken to those who have and they would
probably agree with you on both counts. I can't blame you a bit. Yet if
we're going to start, I suspect we ought to do so before you lose your
nerve about it. If you have some time to spare, we could begin now.

Karal shrugged with a nonchalance he in no way felt. "Id rather not put
it off and take a chance that I might need to channel power in the next
few hours. The way my luck runs, I would need what you might have taught me if I hadn't delayed because-" He stopped himself before he admitted how frightened he was, but Sejanes saw it anyway. He left his hand on Karal's shoulder a moment longer. "I told you, it is no shame to be afraid, young one," he said in a low, reassuring voice. "Channels hold power as great as any Adept, and sometimes greater; the only difference between them is that Channels don't actually use what they carry. And perhaps that is what makes it harder for them. They are used by the power, rather than using it. What sane creature ever gives up control if he does not have to? 

Karal shuddered; he wouldn't ever want to use all that power. It would
be more responsibility than he ever cared to handle under any
circumstances, no matter how dire.

"That's-that's quite a thought, sir. We-we of the Sunlord give up
control to Him as a matter of faith. But we are still afraid sometimes,
and He only helps those who try hard to deal with difficulties
themselves. And I'm afraid I don't know much about magic at all, if it
comes right down to it."

"Good. Then you have little or nothing to unlearn. And, yes, your faith
will help you." Sejanes led the way to the chamber they were using for
storage, purloined a couple of empty buckets and a pair of folded
blankets for cushions to sit on, and took Karal over to a quiet corner.
When they had made rough stools out of the upturned buckets and rested
the cushions upon them, he began. Karal experienced a disconcerting
sense of familiarity and an equally disconcerting sense of
disconnection; Sejanes sounded like every good teacher he had ever
studied under, but the surroundings were nothing like the classrooms of
the Sun-priests where he had done all that study. And if he closed his
eyes, Sejanes sounded so much like Ulrich except for the accent that it
was uncanny.

"Mage-power, as we know and understand it, is an energy that is given
off by living things in the same way that fire gives off heat and light
in the act of consuming wood," he said, his manner easy and casual, his
tone exactly the same as if he were describing the weather and not a
power that could wreck kingdoms. "It tends to want to gather together,
and tends to follow well-worn paths. In that, it is more like rainwater
than fire."

"And mages can see this power?" Karal asked, though his mouth was dry
with nervousness.

"That's what makes someone a mage," Sejanes replied. "I can see that
power any time I make the effort to-and someone like Firesong has to
make an effort not to see it." Karal glanced over at Firesong, who
looked no different from any other absurdly handsome Hawkbrother, and
shook his head. Seeing power all the time...  was it like seeing
things with an extra color added? Was it like seeing particles and waves swirling all around you like swimming underwater? And when the power got too strong, did it blind you, like looking into the sun?

"Now, the power itself obeys rules," Sejanes continued.

"When the threadlike paths, or tiny streams, merge together enough to
make them of a different magnitude of strength, we call them
'ley-lines'. These tend to be straight, at least in the short term, and
that, besides strength of power, is what makes ley-lines different from
the trickles that feed them."

"Is it the strength that makes them straight?" Karal hazarded.

Sejanes looked pleased. "We don't know for certain, but that is the
Theory," he said. "It makes sense; a trickle of water will meander more
than a powerful river. We think that after a certain point, the power
can cut through the world taking the shortest distance which, as Master
Levy will tell you, is always a straight line." Karal nodded; no wonder
Sejanes and Master Levy got on so well!

"Now, sooner or later, since power is attracted by power, these lines
will meet. The places where two or more ley-lines meet forms something
called a node, where power collects." Sejanes looked at him expectantly.

Karal hazarded another question. "It can't collect indefinitely, though, can it?" Sejanes looked very pleased. "No, it can't, and it will either be used up or drain away into the Void, and we honestly don''t know what happens to it after that." Karal seemed to recall An'desha telling him something about a third option, something that the Hawkbrothers used called a Heartstone, but that was a complication he didn't need right now. First, learn the rules, and worry about the exceptions later. 

"Now-about using power," Sejanes continued. "Mages can use the power
that they themselves produce. Mages can use the power given off by
things in their immediate vicinity. Mages can also store power for later use in reservoirs; those can be available only to a single mage, or can be a group effort, built by group contributions, for as long as the group lasts."

"Everybody?" Karal asked, more than a bit alarmed by the notion of a
barely-trained Apprentice being able to use such power.

"Oh, no!" Sejanes chuckled. "No, fortunately, lack of training and
practice provides some control. The common titles for levels of ability
refer to what power they can tap, and not their absolute skill. As with
any venture, some people are more skilled than others, but I digress.
Apprentices can only use their own power or what is immediately
available around them below the level of a ley-line. Journeymen can use
leylines. Masters can use those reservoirs. If a mage is part of a particular school, he is given the key to the reservoir built by the mages of that school at the time he becomes a Master. At that point, part of his duty every day is to feed the reservoir as much power as he has time to gather. Eventually, over the years, with these reservoirs being filled more often than they are drained, they are ready for anything the Masters might need, but that power is tame, like water in a still pond."

"Because it isn't flowing anywhere?" Karal asked, and was rewarded by
Sejanes's nod. "But what about nodes?"

"That," Sejanes said with a shading of pride, "is what only Adepts can
do. Adepts don't need to bother with the reservoirs, though they
sometimes do simply because they are so still-for very delicate work,
for example, such as Healings. Adepts can tap into and use the raw power of the nodes. The stronger the Adept, the larger the node he can control. Leyline power is harder to control than reservoir power or ambient power, because, as you guessed, it is 'moving' so to speak. But node power fights the user, because it is moving swiftly, sometimes in more than one direction and is wild and unconfined. Have you understood me so far?" Karal nodded; so far this all seemed very straightforward.

Perhaps Altra would also be able to help him with this, since the
Firecat seemed something of a mage.

"Last of all of those who handle mage-power come the Channels." Sejanes
nodded at Karal. "As I said when I began, the one thing that all
life-path mages have in common is that they have what the Valdemarans
call the Mage-Gift, and that ability enables them to actually see magic
power. Channels, however, usually do not have Mage-Gift, or if they do,
it isn't very strong."

"Why?" Karal asked.

Sejanes rubbed the side of his nose. "I don't know if there is a reason. There is some speculation that this is partly a protection for them, and partly a protection against them. The ability to sense magic power might be blinded the first time a Channel was used by very powerful magic. And if you can sense something, you can use it, so it might be better for all of us that anyone who can handle power stronger than any Adept would even dream of touching cannot actually use that power himself." Again, Karal nodded. If you went on the basic assumption that any Karsite would-which was that it was Vkandis who granted such abilities-such a system of checks and balances made complete sense. Vkandis would not have placed extraordinary power within the capacity of mere mortals without some curbs on the system.

The explanation might also simply be that the act of attempting to
actually use that much power rather than just direct it could be fatal.
If mages who were also Channels died before they could wed and bring
forth children with the Gift, such a combination wouldn't last for long. Look what happened to those with mind-magic in Karse. They'd been
gathered up and given to the Fires for generations, and as a result,
just before Solaris took power, there were so few such "witches" and
"demons" that there hadn't been more than four or five Fires a year,
with a single victim apiece.

Sejanes looked down at his hands for a moment, gathering his thoughts.
"Think of a funnel; the wide end catches scattered drops of water or
small pieces of matter, and focuses it down into a small, directed
stream. That's what a Channel does, and roughly how a Channel does it.
And because a Channel actually forces the power going through him to
flow through a 'smaller space' he increases the force of that flow and
its 'speed' if you will. So what a Channel needs to work perfectly is
someone to guide the power in, however wild it may be, and someone to
direct it as it goes out again. Remember that directing something-much
like shunting a stream a few degrees-is much easier than using it."
Karal nodded numbly as Sejanes continued.

"Magic is much like water, Karal, but it is far more versatile. It can be manipulated by force of will, by natural aptitude, by specialized devices, and by other ways. Water, essentially, can only get things 'wet' if I may use a crude analogy. Magic, however, can get things wet, turn things to dust, set them ablaze, make them into stone, give them life, put them somewhere else, and so on. But magic in its wild forms works in very gradual and subtle ways. It is not until magic is manipulated by someone that it has 'quick' effects. Without mages, magic takes its natural course."

"Like a river," Karal offered. "And mages make water wheels and dams and bridges."

Sejanes leaned back, apparently impressed. "That," he said slowly, "is essentially it. Yes. That is what we do." Karal bit at his lower lip and offered, "And what happened here, is that long ago there was an explosion in the magic that-scooped a hole out. And the water-I mean, the magic-is rushing back to fill the hole."

"Close," Sejanes nodded. "Very close. You are a bright young man, Karal. Now, back to just what you are. A Channel. For whatever reason, a Channel collects power that is brought to him, and directs it in a more purely directed, less stormy fashion."

"That's all there is to it?" Karal exclaimed. "I am a funnel?" Sejanes
smiled.

"That's all the theory," he chided gently. "But now comes the practice that will help you keep parts of yourself from interfering with or even fighting that stream of power. And it will be all the harder because you will be dealing with something you yourself can only sense dimly, like playing blind-man's bluff with an unruly stallion. And to continue that analogy, I'm not going to show you how to catch and ride the beast, because it will kill you if you try. Instead, I'm going to try to teach you how to keep 'yourself' out of its way."

At the end of the lesson, Karal was quite certain that Sejanes' analogy
of a game with an angry horse was the correct one. The inside of his
head felt bruised, somehow, though certainly not as bad as he had felt
after the first time he'd acted as a Channel. The lesson was over when
Sejanes clapped him on the back and told him that he had done very well
for his first attempt.

"You aren't the worst Channel I've ever seen, and we tend to use them
more than you Westerners do," the old mage said cheerfully. "I don't
know if the ability occurs more often in the Empire or if we Imperial
mages are so lazy that we'd rather use Channels than focus power
ourselves, and so we make an active effort to look for the ability. But
you aren't the worst, that's for certain, and you've come to the lessons late in your life, so that's encouraging."

"Faint praise, but better than none, I suppose," Altra observed, wrapping himself around Karal's legs "Natoli is waiting to talk to you."

"I'm going to assume that since my lord Altra is here, that your young
lady is ready to speak to you," Sejanes observed. "Go on, off with you. By the by, you'll toughen up as you practice; this should be the worst training session you'll ever endure.

"You'll notice he said training session," Altra observed, as Karal got up from his stool and followed the Firecat. "That doesn't say anything
about the real thing." That hadn't escaped Karal's attention, but he
really didn't want to dwell on it, not when he was finally going to get
to see and talk to Natoli.

Karal took his place on the empty stool in front of the teleson; Altra
draped himself over Karal's feet, and the Herald in the crystal winked,
and stepped away. A moment later, Natoli moved into the place he had
vacated.

She looked as if she had recovered from the boiler explosion.

Her hair was a little longer than it had been when he left, and she
looked at him as if she had forgotten why she was there. Suddenly he
felt very shy.

"Hello, Natoli," he said awkwardly. "You look in good health." He winced as he listened to himself; was that any way to speak to a girl he really wanted to be able to kiss?

"You don't," she said bluntly, peering at him. "You're too pale, and too thin. What have you been doing to yourself?" That was so very typical of her that he had to laugh, and relaxed immediately.

"As to the first, we've been living underground, and we mostly don't get to see the sun. And as to the second-have you ever tasted Firesong's cooking?" He shuddered melodramaticallyy, and she laughed in return. "Seriously. We're mostly eating as the Shin'a'in do; it's not that bad, just a little odd."

"And you don't often see a fat Shin'a'in," she said shrewdly. "Things were quiet until Altra showed up with this contraption. We Artificers all wanted to take it apart, of course, but when we were told that the first person to try would be skinned, we gave up on the idea." She grinned. "We'll have to make do with trying to duplicate it from those manuscripts. If we can, we'll send one by fast Herald-courier to Solaris, and then you'll get to talk to her on a regular basis."

"Must I?" he asked weakly. He was not ready to face Solaris just yet. He wasn't sure he would be for quite a while, actually.

Her Radiance was not a comfortable person to speak to, face-to-face. For that matter, she wasn't a comfortable person to communicate with, letter to letter; he always had the feeling that he was reading something intended for an audience rather than a personal letter.

"First we have to duplicate it," she pointed out, and smiled.

"You know, I'm very glad to see you again. Sometimes, in the middle of
the night, Id wake up, and I'd wonder if you were-quite real." Oddly
enough, he knew exactly what she meant. "It's hard to imagine someone
being real who's that far away," he agreed. "It's as if they never
existed except in your mind." She flushed a little, and looked away for
a moment. "Anyway," she continued awkwardly, "we've been busy, though it doesn't have anything to do with the important things." She sounded
wistful. "There's just nothing we can do right now to help with what
you're doing, so we're back to the old projects like bridges and steam
boilers."

"There's nothing wrong with that," he countered. "Don't these things
have to be done no matter what disaster might be looming?" He managed a
crooked grin. "If everything else falls apart, your bridges will be
there to get people across rivers that can't be ferried or forded.
Surely that's worth something."

She shrugged but looked pleased. "At least what we're doing is useful,"
she admitted. "It's odd, though. The folk around and about Haven have
the funniest attitude; you can tell them and tell them that the
protection we've given them from the mage-storms is only temporary- but
they act as if it's permanent. They aren't doing anything to prepare
themselves for the worst, they aren't even thinking about it." Now she
sounded and looked very frustrated. "When you ask them why, they just
shrug and can't give you an answer, or they say something stupid,
fatalistic, or both."

"I think," he said slowly, "that ordinary folk just can't imagine
anything awful happening to them. It always happens to someone else."

"Well, you'd think after years of war and bandits and all they should
know better," she replied acidly. "At any rate, now that things have
settled down, they aren't at all interested in asking us about things
they can do when the Storms come again, they just want to know how long
it is going to take before a bridge will be up. Or if the steam boiler
is likely to explode again."

"I hope you're on bridges," he said, trying not to show alarm. "And not
steam boilers."

"Actually, I'm on metal stress," she replied, running her hand through
her hair absently. "I get to make some very interesting and loud noises. We're trying to make tougher alloys, but I don't want to bore you with what we're doing. I spend some time in the forge, because at the moment, work on steam boilers is stalled until we can find a better way to make the boiler itself."

He sighed, resting his chin on his hands. "It wouldn't bore me, but I'd be lost," he admitted. "Sejanes is trying to teach me some specific kind of exercises for working with magic, and those would probably mean about as much to you."

"Probably." The conversation died for a moment. "Still, I hope you
aren't-I mean, I don't want you to think that-" her face twisted with
frustration. "Just, if you're doing something dangerous, don't take more on yourself than you can carry all right?"

He smiled. "As long as you promise to do the same," he replied, and she laughed.

"Grain for the gander is good for the goose, hmm? Well, I'll promise to
try but my judgment is sometimes faulty "So is mine, so don't hold it
against me." His smile took on an ironic edge. "We can't all be
infallible Sons of the Sun."

"Oh, even Solaris admits to fallibility" she chuckled. "Believe it or
not."

"Solaris?" he chuckled. "That would be an entry in the annals especially if she admitted that she was fallible to you polytheistic barbarians."

"But she did!" Natoli protested, and as he continued to regard her
askance, she looked surprised. "Oh! I'll bet no one told you, any of
you! You will not believe what has happened with Grand Duke Tremane" As
she outlined the astonishing developments in Hardorn since the arrival
of Elspeth and Darkwind, Karal felt his eyes growing larger and larger.
No one had seemed to think that any of this was significant enough to
pass on to any of the other members of his party-Which is probably
because they all have their own preoccupations and not a one of them
thinks anything is important outside those preoccupations! But you'd
think someone would have said something to Sejanes!

"We have a Herald and a Companion stationed down in Karse in
Solaris'-court, I suppose you call it-" she added.

"Conclave," he corrected.

"Conclave, then. We sent him down so that we could get information to
her by way of his Companion and Talia's Rolan." She laughed. "Actually,
it's not just a Herald, it's my father, and he seems to be enjoying
himself. Anyway, we sent her word about this, and the reply she sent
back was: "Since he has voluntarily placed himself in the hands of a
higher judge of character than myself, I feel impelled to point out that Natoli, An'desha, and Karal were correct in their assessment of his basic character, and I was at least in part swayed by nothing more
substantial than emotion." What do you think of that?" She grinned, as
if she had somehow won a great prize. Then again, winning a concession
like that from Solaris would have been a great prize, particularly as it was her father who had sent the message on to Haven.

It's a small thing, but she just proved to her father that she doesn't
have to be a Herald to accomplish something important, he realized. And
maybe she just proved it to herself as well.

"I think she didn't use the ecclesiastic plural, which means that she
was speaking for Solaris and not for the Son of the Sun," he told her,
but he felt very pleased, nevertheless, for the sake of his own people.
Historically, it was a tremendous temptation for the Son of the Sun to
always think of himself as speaking for Vkandis, until even the most
minor personal opinions were incorporated as doctrine. Solaris appeared
to have overcome that particular temptation. "Which is not a bad thing."

"No, it's not." She appeared to have run out of things to say, and
another awkward moment of silence descended. "I suppose you'll want to
go tell all this to Sejanes..." He did, but he also didn't want to go,
even though he didn't really have anything to say. The silence
lengthened and be came more strained. She glanced to the side, and her
expression lightened a little with relief even while it darkened with
disappointment. "Oh, here's someone for Master Levy. Altra will hold
the teleson open while you get him-"

"Of course!" he said, feeling both emotions himself. "Natoli, take care
of yourself! And I-I miss all of you." He didn't dare say that he missed only her, but he hoped she got that impression from his hesitation.

"I-we miss you too," she replied, with a smile more shy than usual, and
vanished from the crystal. Karal ran to get Master Levy~ who nodded and
hurried to the device carrying a sheaf of notes as if h had been
expecting to be summoned back.

Karal glanced around and couldn't find Sejanes in the upper rooms; he
listened carefully and heard the old mage's voice coming thinly from the workshops below. He hurried down the stairs to find Sejanes chatting away comfortably with Lyam, though Tarm was nowhere in sight.

"Sir!" he called, "I've got the most amazing news about Duke Tremane!

"Well," Sejanes said, chuckling softly. "Well, well, well." He was
inordinately pleased with Karal's news, and Karal could not help but
wonder why.

That's an odd way to react, considering that Tremane has acted quite
unlike a proper Imperial officer. "I thought you might be upset, sir,"
he ventured, tilting his head to one side. "Aren't you?"

"Upset? No, this is rather good news, all things considered," Sejanes
replied, and chuckled again. "It seems that my former pupil has learned
at long last that there are things that do not always answer to his
logic. I am quite glad to hear this, truth be told. This is going to be a very good thing for everyone concerned." Karal kept his inquisitive expression, hoping to prompt more information from the mage, and Sejanes enlarged on his statement.

"I am pleased for Hardorn, for that sad, maltreated land could not have
found a better caretaker." He blinked, and his eyes fixed on some
distant point beyond Karal. "I am pleased because Tremane could not have found a better trust than Hardorn. He was wasted on the Empire; he has the misfortune to be that rarest of Imperial creatures, a man of high rank who still maintains a shred or two of integrity and compassion. That is not to say, at all, that the military is composed of heartless men; far from that, in fact. He might have done well had he remained within the military, but as Emperor, he would have been a victim of one of three unpleasant fates-eaten alive by those conspiring to use him, murdered, or corrupted."

That much I can see," Karal replied. "It's quite logical, but..." He
faltered, unsure how to ask what he wanted to know without being rude.
Imperials were not--quite-irreligious, but they were hardly as devout as even the average Valdemaran. And when compared with the average Karsite, they were positively atheistic!

Sejanes seemed to understand what he wanted to know.

"Not all citizens of the Empire are so immersed in practicality as you
think." His gaze softened and turned inward for a moment." Those most
likely to become cynical, believers in nothing that they cannot see, are the career courtiers. Those least likely-probably the folk who live
nearest the land, and those who live by magic. My young protégé was
poised between the cynic and the believer, and he could have taken
either path. He may be the rarest of all, one who can see the truth in
both." Karal wanted badly to ask just what Sejanes believed in, but he
sensed that Sejanes would not tell him now. He might never. That was his right, of course. And it would be horribly impolite of Karal to ask him. If he ever wanted to tell Karal, he would.

"It is my own opinion, that whatever else has happened, Tremane has
discovered that there are those other paths. Perhaps that will open his
mind to those other possibilities." He rubbed his eyes for a moment, as
if they were tired. "And I am pleased that he has an outside governor in this earth-binding, something to-shall we say-keep him from succumbing to other temptations."

"He is that weak, then?" asked Lyam, with the careless tone of one to
whom Duke Tremane and his men were no more real than the folk in the
Chronicles of a thousand years ago.

They might not be. The Kaled'a'in are so different from the Imperials
that they must seem equally unreal to each other.

"Not weak," Sejanes amended, and his wrinkled brow knit- He's trying to
explain Tremane to a couple of youngsters for whom the Empire is only a
name, who cannot even imagine the levels of intrigue that someone like
Tremane must negotiate every day. Karal waited for the aged mage to find the right words. And he can't know that the Temple of Vkandis is-or was, anyway-as much a hotbed of conspiracy as any court. I don't think Lyam could ever understand the stresses that Tremane must have been under, but I do. I wonder if Tremane ever got tired of it all, and wished for things to be simpler? "No, he's not weak." Sejanes repeated. "The trouble is that certain habits, certain ways of reacting, become
ingrained. It would be all too simple to revert to the ways in which
business is conducted in the Empire, without thought for what was good
for Hardorn. That, more than anything, would be the temptation; to take
the way that is easiest, rather than the one that is best for the people and the land, and doubly so when resources are low." Lyam looked
baffled, but shrugged, accepting what Sejanes said for the moment.

Karal nodded. "Trying to do things the way he was used to would probably get him in great difficulties in Hardorn, wouldn't it?" he asked. "It might even break up the peace, and he might not know why that had happened. Now, he hasn't a choice, you see; he'll know what is best and he'll have to do it, or he knows how he'll suffer for it. And you know," he continued, feeling a certain amount of surprise at the insight,

"The thing is, since people will know he can't do anything selfishly or
maliciously, they're likely to be easier on his mistakes, if you take my meaning. They'll be more likely to forgive and explain." Sejanes
flashed a mildly surprised but appreciative look at him. "Exactly so.
And I am very fond of Tremane; I should like to see him as happy as
anyone burdened with power and the ability to wield it can be. He has a
strong sense of responsibility, and this may be the one opportunity of
his lifetime to exercise that responsibility with people who are likely
to appreciate the care he will take." Once again, Sejanes' gaze turned
inward. "He had his estate, of course, but those on it were used to
being ruled gently. The folk of Hardorn were subjected to every ill
imaginable. That will make them grateful to a gentler hand." Lyam
uttered the breathy equivalent of a laugh, showing very sharp, pointed
teeth. "He will be finding himself burdened with more than power, I
think. Earth-sense is as jealous a mistress as responsibility." "But
the earth-sense and his own responsibility will work in harness
amicably, rather than pulling him to pieces between them, Sejanes
countered. "Had he risen to power in the Empire, he would have spent
every day being torn among fear, duty, responsibility, expediency, and
the right. I think it might have driven him mad. I know it would have
changed him into something I would no longer recognize." The hertasi
shrugged again. "Good, then. We take what small victories we can. I hope that all this gives him aid if we cannot stop the Storms. He shall need every help he can muster to protect these people who are now depending on him." "It might." Karal knew something about earth-sense, though few Sun-priests had it. The ability was much valued among the farmers of the Karsite hills, where the soil was poor and the weather chancy. If you knew that it would be a bad decision to plant corn this year in a particular field, and a good lie to plant clover, you might prosper when your neighbors failed. And if you shared your expertise with your neighbors, you might all be able to pay the tithe in goods instead of your own flesh-and-blood, come harvest time. It wasn't exactly a witch-power, and it wasn't exactly one of the things that would get you sent to the Fires, but it also wasn't the sort of thing that you spoke about to the Sun-priests. The Sun-priests in their turn were careful not to ask about it, and all was well.

"Another small victory then." Lyam nodded decisively, and seemed to
think that a change of subject was in order.

"This Natoli, who gave you this word-is she kin to you? Or something
else?" That was not the subject the young Karsite would have chosen, and Karal felt himself blushing furiously, as Lyam's quick eyes and quicker wit filled in the truth. "Ah-" the little lizard said not without sympathy, his head bobbing. "She is to you what Lylen is to me, I think." He sighed gustily. "I do miss her company, but I would not have her here. She could not have endured the journey, and I think she would have felt herself useless, which is a bad thing for anyone to feel."

"Natoli would have felt the same, Karal admitted. "Oh, I feel useless
about half the time, and it makes me want to bite something. I'd rather
not think how she would react."

"Nor I, lylen." Lyam laughed. "A trimmer tail there never was, nor a
more graceful snout, but neither belong to a maid with an overabundance
of patience." He shared a glance of fellow-feeling with Karal, and the
young Karsite experienced a definite warming in the relationship between them.

"Well, Sejanes, I will take my leave of you," Lyam told the mage. "And
of you, Karal. My stomach has an overly-intimate embrace with my spine,
and I think I shall venture Firesong's cooking and see if it is as
terrible as you claim. Surely he learned something from his hertasi"

"It's not Firesong tonight, it's An'desha," Karal assured him, "And he
and the Shin'a'in have agreed to share that particular chore from now
on."

"Thanks to the Hundred Little Gods!" Sejanes exclaimed with clear
relief. "Even enduring Shin'a'in butter-tea is preferable to eating what Firesong cooks!"

"In that case, I will haste my steps!" the hertasi cried. "In case the
other starvelings aloft decide to leave me with naught but scrapings!"
He scrambled down from his stool and scampered up the stairs with a
staccato click of toenails on stone. Sejanes cocked an eyebrow at Karal.

"What about you?" he asked. "I was under the impression that young men
were never quite fully fed." It was Karal's turn to shrug uncomfortably. His stomach was still in something of a knot, and he wondered if Natoli was always going to affect him that way. If so, he was destined to grow much thinner.

"Lucky in love?" the old man asked, softly, and with a kindly and
sympathetic manner. "Or unlucky? Either one can be hazardous to the
appetite."

"I-I'm not sure," Karal replied, feeling his cheeks burning.

"We don't know each other that well..." Sejanes reached out and patted
his knee. "Uncertainty can be just as hazardous. But I take it that she
is a trusted friend?"

"Oh, yes, absolutely," Karal said fervently. "There isn't anyone I would trust more." Humph." Karal glanced hastily down at his feet, where Altra lay coiled around the legs of his chair, hitherto unnoticed. How had the Firecat gotten there? The last Karal had seen, Altra had been sprawled on the floor near the teleson.

"There isn't a human I trust more. I trust her as much as I trust Altra
and Florian, he amended hastily. "And for a great many of the same
reasons." Better. Not perfect, but better."

"That is an excellent beginning, then," Sejanes said, his tone just as
serious and his demeanor as sober as if he was discussing the next
solution to the mage-storm. "One should always begin with friendship,
rather than a more ardent emotion. The former will last, if the latter does not. And one should also have enough in common with a young lady to be her friend. Unless, of course, it is a case of a prearranged attachment, and in that case, there is little that one can do besides hope that one's parents, guardians, or other adults involved have some notion of what might appeal to one in the way of a lifetime companion and attempt to find those things that one has in common with her." Karal had to chuckle at Sejanes' careful way of putting things. He was delicately trying to learn if Karal and Natoli had been joined to one another by parental agreement, or if they might be violating other such agreements with their own acquaintance.

"It's not prearranged, and I also don't think her father, Rubric, will mind that we're-ah, friends-since he's the one who introduced us in the first place. He's the Herald who's been sent into Karse as the liaison with Solaris. I think that Natoli doesn't make friends easily." Sejanes brightened. "This sounds more promising with every word you add!" he said with real enthusiasm. "And your feelings at the moment? Attracted, but confused?"

"Very much so." Karal was as amused as he was embarrassed.

Sejanes was certainly taking a very active interest in this situation!
And if Karal had not known him, it would be very tempting to dismiss his interest as that of an interfering, old-maidish busybody.

But Sejanes had never interfered in anyone's private life, as far as
Karal knew; he was hardly old-maidish, and gave no evidence of being a
busybody, although he had intervened to offer to teach Karal something
of magic. No, this concern seemed to arise out of some genuine interest
in Karal, in the manner of a master with a protégé. Just like Ulrich,
his former master.

"You remind me in some ways of some former students of mine," Sejanes
said quietly, echoing his own thoughts. "And you can tell me to go to
the dogs if you think I'm prying where I have no right, but I hope
perhaps I can give you useful advice about Natoli." He grinned
conspiratorily. "I have had a number of lady friends over the years, and most of them were as highly intelligent as she seems to be. I believe I can remember what it was like to be young!" Karal stared at him in mingled surprise and gratitude, for he'd had no one to ask for such advice. An'desha was mostly concerned with Lo'isha and the other
Shin'a'in, when he wasn't working, as they all were, with the dangerous
magics here. Florian and Altra weren't human, and although Lyam
apparently had a lady friend, neither was he. Firesong-well, his advice
would hardly apply to Karal's situation, even if he wasn't already wary
of asking the Tayledras anything personal.

He didn't know Silverfox well enough, he was not going to ask romantic
advice of Natoli's teacher Master Levy and the Shin'a'in were none of
them approachable enough. The idea of coming to Sejanes would never have occurred to him.

But Ulrich would have helped me... which would have given him the same
advice his father would have given him, or an older brother if he'd had
one.

Vkandis did not require that his priests be celibate, only chaste
outside of marriage. Ulrich had told his pupil more than once that he
had been romantically attached twice, and that only outside
circumstances had prevented him from making either of those women his
wife.

Karal knew a bit more than just that, though it was still bare bones. In the case of the second lady in his life, Ulrich and his intended had an extreme difference of opinion over the internal politics of the
priesthood, and had not spoken again, not even after Solaris became Son
of the Sun. The first time, early in his life, the lady had suffered a
short but fatal illness, leaving him brokenhearted for many years.

Ulrich himself had never told Karal the stories; he'd learned of both
from some of the Red-robe priests who were longtime friends and
colleagues of his mentor. They had meant to compassionately keep him
from inadvertently touching salt to Ulrich's open wounds, and warned
him of the things he must not press unless Ulrich himself broached the
subject.

But that had not prevented Ulrich from giving him some preliminary
advice about girls, and the possible pursuit thereof, though at the time he had not been at all interested even in the idea. Perhaps Ulrich had a premonition that one day, he would need that advice.

But it was far more likely that Ulrich had simply been offering what he
would give any lively young person who was his protégé; the suggestion
that he himself had enough experience in matters of romance to offer
advice. That set the scene for what was inevitable, and would have
prevented him from going to his less-experienced peers for advice that
had as much chance of being harmful as helpful.

Now Sejanes was offering the same thing, and Karal was only too happy to accept the offer.

"Thank you, sir," he said simply. "Do you have any ideas about what I
should say to her?" He smiled sheepishly. "Don't think that I'm
ungrateful, but talking with her is all I can do right now, given our
current distance."

"That may be just as well," Sejanes replied mildly, but with a twinkle.
"And yes, I have a few suggestions." That was precisely what he wanted
to hear.

Karal and Lyam scribbled on identical sheets of foolscap, seated side by side on a pallet bed, both of them taking full notes of this meeting. The entire group sat on pallets in a rough, three-sided square around the teleson, which was situated in front of Firesong. This was a new version of the old Council sessions that they had held in the Council Room of the Palace at Haven, and he wondered how many of the Councillors on the other side were gazing at the teleson with bafflement.

Surely the device must seem to them as strange as any of the
Storm-changed beasts that had been displayed for their edification. A
tiny image of Queen Selenay gazed solemnly at them from the crystal
lens. She had just asked him if he had any more information on when the
mage-storms would begin again.

"I can't speak for magic, but I can for mathematical probability, and
that has given us the ability to predict what is going to happen up to a point. The mathematics is relatively clear on this," Master Levy said
gravely. "The cancellation effect of the power burst that was released
from here is gradually eroding; we'll be seeing the resumption of
stormlets in four days, but I don't think that even the most sensitive
mage will detect them unless he is looking for them. That's all we know
right now, and Treyvan will be in charge of the mages who will be
looking for the stormlets and attempting to measure their relative
strength. Once we have the resumption of stormlets that actually affect
the physical world, we can measure how much they increase in strength
and decrease in interval. We'll be able to calculate then how long it
will take before the Storms have major physical effects again, and how
long until they are dangerous. Once they are dangerous, however, they
will build up to a repetition of the one released at the original
Cataclysm. I have absolutely no doubt of that." In the crystal of the
teleson, Selenay nodded gravely. Although she alone was visible, the
Haven teleson sat in the middle of the Council Chamber, surrounded by a
full Council at their horseshoe-shaped table. All of them were able to
hear what Master Levy said, although they only saw Firesong.

"Now we come to the question of the last Storm and the effect here,
where all of the force will be concentrated. Here is where Need,
An'desha, Sejanes, and I have performed our own calculations, and we're not optimistic," Firesong said with uncharacteristic restraint. "It is not good, Majesty. Although the shields of this place survived the initial, outward release, we do not believe they will survive the impact of the energies converging on this place. We think the shields will go down, and all the weapons that have not been rendered harmless will go then, and that will be bad."

"By 'go," just what is it that you are saying?" asked one of the
Councillors around the Haven teleson. "And just what precisely does
'bad' mean?" Karal restrained a nervous titter. How would you explain
"bad" to someone whose idea of a catastrophe was a major forest fire, a
great flood, or a landslide? How do you get him to believe that it was
possible to release forces that melted rock towers and dug craters the
size of some countries?

"I wish I knew," Firesong admitted. "We don't know what most of them
were intended to do, only that they were weapons deemed 'too dangerous'
to use'. It would be supremely ironic to discover that they cancel one
another out, but I gravely doubt that we can count on that. Certainly
the area of destruction will cover the Plains, and since we have enough
warning this time, the Shin'a'in are evacuating." The Shin'a'in are
evacuating. The Shin'a'in, who never, ever left the Plains. Would that
tell the inquisitive Councillor just how grave the situation was? Karal
didn't know.

"Whether the effect will carry as far as Valdemar, I couldn't say,
although if I were in your place, I'd count on it." Firesong held up a
hand in warning. "And don't ask, "What effect?" because I don't know
that, either. We're trying to find out, but we're dealing with weapons
created in secret by a secretive mage and the only notes are in a
language that was current two millennia ago. We're doing the best that
we can, and having more people here would only slow things down, but
what we do may not be enough, or in time." Karal noted the grumbling on
the other side, but no one said anything out loud. Probably because, as
Natoli said, they just don't believe it can happen. Sheer stupidity on
their part, but there it is. In a way, he couldn't blame them; they were new to true-magic, relatively speaking. For most of them, the terrible things that Ancar's mages had done were only stories, and the first time they had seen anything like magic was when the mage-storms began. Nor could they imagine a force that could turn a flourishing country into a smoking, glass-floored crater.

He noted that down, in a sidebar. Tarm had told him that his
observations could be important, so long as they weren't of a personal
nature, and to note them down.

Most people don't believe that a disaster is coming, or that it can
affect them, even when they're told repeatedly.

He was tremendously grateful that he no longer had to represent Karse at the Council; one of the Sun-priests who had fought with the Valdemarans against Ancar had come North at the same time that Natoli's father had gone South. He had never been comfortable in such a  position, had never felt particularly capable of handling it, no matter what Solaris herself said. And certainly about half the other members of the Council had doubts now and again about his competence and even his integrity. But that Sun-priest had certainly seen magic and believed in it with his whole heart. Perhaps he could help convince the doubters.

"What about the weapons themselves?" someone else asked intelligently.
"If we can get rid of them harmlessly, we'd be able to lessen the danger by that much. Is there any way of dismantling them?"

"When Urrrtho sssaid he could not?" That was Treyvan, his, voice
indignant. "When he left a warrrning to that effect?

Arrre you mad?" Ah, the things a gryphon can get away with saying, just
because he's larger than anything or anyone else! Karal was glad that
Treyvan and Hydona were there to say all the rude things that needed
saying.

"We are proceeding very slowly in our understanding of these devices,"
Firesong said smoothly. "If there is a way to dismantle them, we will.
We may be very lucky; at least one of them simply disintegrated with
age, and time might have done what mortal hands could not." It was
interesting to Karal how Firesong had taken on the role of spokesman for the group. Not that anyone else had rushed to volunteer, but Firesong was by nature a bit lazy, and not apt to take on any more responsibility than he had to.

Then again, if Florian or Altra had held the teleson link open, the
Councillors would have seen only Karal, the Companion or the Firecat,
none of which were good choices for inspiring respect. Sejanes had no
mind-magic, nor did Master Levy. An'desha did, but he was no better
choice than Karal, although thanks to his magic-whitened hair, he looked a bit older than Karal. Need could have gotten respect, but if Need had held the link, they'd all be seeing Firesong anyway. At least people respected Firesong; even feared him a little. One good thing; his acidic wit made a fine weapon to wield against intransigent or argumentative Councillors.

Then again, it is a chance for Firesong to be seen, appreciated, and
admired, and who else has he had as an audience lately?

"First we have to discover what, exactly, they are supposed to do. Then
how they do it. Then we might be able to judge if we have the ability to disarm them," Firesong explained patiently. "If you think of them as
enormously complicated traps with a weapon in the middle, this will make more sense to you."

"But-" someone began, and stopped.

"Fortunately," Sejanes picked up smoothly, "this study does not at all
interfere with our studies of the mage-storms, because that is taking
place up there, among you. Here we are still operating on the assumption that we may have to trigger one of these weapons to counteract the final Storm. We already know which are the best choices, and together with the notes we found in the workshop below, we are studying them to see if the same solution we found the last time is viable this time."

"And what if you can't find an answer?" That voice sounded strained and
somewhat panicked, So there was at least one person on the Council who
was taking this threat seriously! Karal only hoped it was not someone
who was inclined to take a panicked view of everything. Getting people
to organize their own defense would be easier if they did not think of
the person goading them to it as a chronic overreactor.

You really ought to be operating on the assumption that we won't, and
that all we have done is to buy you time to prepare," Master Levy
replied truculently. He was very impatient with the Council, and had
said as much before this meeting began. "We told you that in the
beginning. When I left, the Artificers were devising a formula to
predict the pattern of the circles of damage."

"We're still working on it," said another voice. "The model isn't
perfect, but we expect to have an answer before the stormlets start, and we'll check its accuracy with measurements as the stormlets increase in strength. By the time there's real damage, the formula will be tested and ready for use."

"So, there's your answer. If we can't come up with a simple solution, you simply keep people and livestock out of those dangerous areas, drain as much power as you can out of that stone under the Palace and shield it with everything you have, and wait for the final Storm to pass." Master Levy's tone said the rest; that any idiot should have been able to sit quietly and figure that much out for himself.

"While you all sit there safe and sound in the Tower?" someone else
accused angrily.

That was a mistake. Karal braced himself for the riposte.

Firesong was not in a good mood, and there was going to be blood on the
Council table in a moment, even if it was metaphorical blood.

"Safe? Sound?" Firesong asked dangerously. "Where did you come by that
incredible notion? Would someone please remove that man for incompetence and put him in the kitchen washing pans where he belongs? If I were the lot of you, I'd throw him off the Council. I do believe in encouraging those of lesser ability, but I think that appointing a congenital idiot to a Council seat is going too far." There was an indignant spluttering on the other side, then a certain amount of commotion; Selenay continued to look serene, but her attention was not on the teleson. It was maddening not to be able to see what was going on.

"Well?" Firesong asked, when the noise had ended.

"We will take your recommendation under advisement," Selenay replied
urbanely, and clearly as much for the benefit of her side of the
gathering as for Firesong's. "You are correct in one thing, if a little
less than tactful; this Council can no longer afford to seat members
whose attention is so concentrated on minor details within their own
sphere that they are paying no attention to the greater dangers that
threaten us all."

"Here here," said another voice, one that Karal recognized after a
moment as Kero".

Oh, my! That was unexpected! And Karal could think of three or four
Council members who matched that particular statement, too! It seemed
that after treachery and invasion and war and Alliance and more war and
mage-storms, even Selenay's patience had begun to run short.

And about time, too. It was all very well to say that those three or
four had been loyal during the worst troubles, and that loyalty deserved reward, but there was a limit. It was not wise to let the shortsighted continue to have authority in a situation like this one. Better to find them some position with rank and privileges and no authority, if Selenay still felt impelled to reward them. Right now, being too shortsighted could very well cost lives.

She might not see any reason to continue to reward these people; and
that wouldn't be all that bad either. Sometimes the hand of censure
needed to be used in order to make people believe it would be used, even against those who thought themselves above censure. In the words of the Shin'a'in, "Use the whip to get the horses out of the burning stable." He was tempted to add that to the notes, but those were the kinds of purely personal observations that Tarm had warned him against, and he kept them to himself.

"There are two Councillors that ought to be given the sack right here and now," Altra observed with irritation. "One of them is not entirely
certain he believes in the intelligence of Companions. How can we expect him to plan for a magic-fed disaster? And the other is so wrapped up in why his district needs protection more than any other that he'll waste valuable time and probably try to divert resources he's not entitled to." Altra didn't have to describe the offending members; Karal knew them well enough from that notation of their personalities. "It's Selenay's Kingdom and Selenay's Council," he reminded the Firecat. "If you'd like to make a recommendation as a Karsite representative, I'd do so privately to her. I'm sure that she would have no difficulty speaking with you after this is over." I'm not such a fool as to make one publicly!" Altra snapped, and shook his head until his ears flapped. "Now I'm more than ever pleased that you're out of there. You don't need to have to deal with these idiots; they'd probably start blaming you for the Cataclysm! And I don't need to be there either. I'd be tempted to wind around their ankles as they started descending a staircase, and be certain of getting them replaced by someone with a bit more reasoning ability than a brick of cheese." He managed to send a mental image of himself coiling around the legs of the stupidest of the two Councillors, and of the man pitching down the staircase in a very comical fashion.

"Bloody-minded today, aren't we?" Karal observed.

Vkandis help any rodent within a league of here," Altra replied. "When
this session is over, and after I've spoken to Selenay, I'm going
hunting." You won't have to go far," Karal told him. "The Shin'ain were
complaining about mice in the horse grain. Think you can lower your
dignity for a bit of mousing?" Altra just snorted.

The Council session proceeded with admirable dispatch after that
particular outburst. For his part, Karal admitted to himself that he was acting in some ways precisely like those unfortunate Councillors who could not or would not believe in the disaster threatening just below the horizon. He was conducting some parts of his life-as in, pursuing his interest with Natoli- as if nothing whatsoever was going to happen to change that life. And he was not going about in a state of
barely-suppressed panic either. But the truth was that what he and
Natoli did or did not do was not going to make a bit of difference to
the Storms or the resolution of the problem, assuming there could be
one. Neither was going about in a cloud of fear going to help resolve
their difficulties. Fear wasn't an emotion you could sustain for weeks
at a time either, so why try to keep himself in a continual state of
near-panic?

But what he could do, he was doing, and at least one of his observations might turn out useful. It had occurred to him that the workshops had remained pristine and intact-more so, even, than the stored weapons-and that there might be even more shielding on them. Or perhaps there was a natural property of the stone, as there was of silk, that insulated everything inside from the effects of magic. Since they had always kept the hatchway open, there was no way to tell, and no one really wanted to volunteer to be shut inside just now.

Natural or not, it would have made sense to have the workshops protected from the possible effects of the weapons stored above-the more so as the workshops could serve as a shelter in case something up here went wrong. Or, alternatively, if something went wrong down there, the weapons stored up here would be unaffected.

But the workshops would make the safest place for those who were not
involved to wait out the last Storm-and perhaps, for all of them to do
so, if it turned out that there was nothing they could do. There was
room enough for all of them, their supplies, and their attendant
Shin'a'in friends to wait in a fair imitation of comfort. It would be
difficult for Florian and the Shin'a'in horses to get down the
staircase, but not impossible. The one drawback the place had was that
it was at a level lower than the tunnel in-and if the stored weapons
were affected- they might find themselves literally sealed inside, as the rock melted and ran or the remains of the building shook itself apart.

But if they waited in the tunnel or on the Plain outside, there would be no escape. He'd already discussed using the workshops in this way with the Shin'a'in, and they had agreed with him, going so far as to carry half of the supplies down there and store them, and making plans to evacuate the camp above into the workshops when the time came.

And as for the folk of the surrounding land, well, for the first time
since the Sundering of the Clans, Shin'a'in and Tayledras were living
together. More than three-quarters of the Clans were off the Plains and
distributed among the nearest Vales. Some others had chosen to go to
trade-cities and the like, where they had contacts or relatives.

Those remaining were heading South rather than North or West, taking
with them all of the breeding horses and other herds, for only the
baggage beasts and personal strings could be accommodated in the Vales.
They were under the escort of the fighters of Kerowyn's old mercenary
company, the Skybolts those few who had retired or elected not to remain in Valdemar. They had returned to Bolthaven and formed a smaller company with the sole duty of guarding the Bolthaven mage-school run by Quenten, the town of Bolthaven, and the annual Shin'a'in Horse Faire. The herds would be safe in the wide and gentle Rethwellan valley below the fortified mageschool, as they would be safe in the hands of those who had benefited from the generosity of Kerowyn's Shin'a'in relatives in the matter of most excellent Shin'a'in-bred mounts.

Before too many more days had passed, the Plains would be empty of
almost everyone but the little group here in the heart of the crater
that was the Dhorisha Plains. A stranger would, for the very first time, be able to cross from one side to the other without hindrance.

Not that anyone would be stupid enough to try. The weather alone ought
to prevent such an idiotic course. Only the Shin'a'in knew where game
lurked in the winter; only the Shin'a'in had fuel sources and tents made to withstand the killing blizzards the Storms had brought. And in a landscape of endlessly rolling white hills with no landmarks, it would be suicide for most to try to navigate across the bowl of the Plains.

Besides, the Kal'enedral who were left were not your normal
border-guards. It was not too bloody likely that anything would move
into the Plains that they didn't know about the moment the
breach-of-border occurred. And under the current circumstances, it would not be wise for anyone to assume that the Star-Eyed was not personally watching the borders. She would not even have to intervene directly in the event of an intruder; simply dumping a foot of ice on the cliffs ringing the Plains would prevent anyone but a skilled ice climber from getting down into the Plains proper. And dumping another foot or two of ice and snow on him while he was climbing, or arranging for an avalanche along the cliff, would see to it that not even an expert ice climber set a single living toe on the Plains below.

Good heavens, I'm as bloody-minded as Altra! Karal realized, as he
serenely contemplated the notion of intruders turned into ice
sculptures. But then again, they couldn't really afford to be anything
less than ruthless now. The escort of Kal'enedral who remained to care
for them had put their lives in the hands of their Goddess to do so, and knew it. Not only was there a good chance that the Tower would not
survive the final Storm, but they were defending an indefensible
position.

The Kal'enedral had defended the Tower in the past by keeping people far away from it; if there was a "lowest geographic point" to the crater that was the Dhorisha Plains, this Tower was probably cradled in the bottom of it.

Most of the Swordsworn had remained with the Clans, and rightly, to
protect them during the evacuation. What if someone deliberately chose
this moment to come looking for the Tower with a mind to stealing one or more of the weapons still in it? There would not be much that anyone
could do to stop him if he came with sufficient force. It would have to
be someone who was completely mad, but as the existence of Ancar and
Falconsbane proved, there were people who were that mad, that
power-crazed, to take such a chance.

But given all that this little group of seekers represented, the
Star-Eyed would probably take care of such an expedition Herself-and if
She didn't, it was just possible that Vkandis would. Just as he thought
that, a lull appeared in the discussion, and Karal decided to do more
than add an observation to his notes. "It has occurred to me just now,"
he said slowly, "that there is a source of possible protection, at least for those of you outside the Tower."

"What's that?" someone asked warily-His ears burned, for he might be
stating the obvious, but it seemed stupid not to mention this. "Ah...
prayer," he said diffidently. "Divine intervention. I mean, have you had people really concentrating on asking for help from other sources?"

"That is no bad answer," Loisha interjected, before anyone else could
say anything. "If our Star-Eyed is like your gods, that could be a fat
hare to pursue. You see, She only responds to peril quite impossible for mortals to deal with, and only if asked. Otherwise, She allows us to handle it ourselves. Your gods may only be waiting to be properly
asked."

"Vkandis has traditionally been the same way," Karal confirmed." I don't know what the gods do in Valdemar, but what is the harm in finding out?"

"None, of course," Selenay said gently. "And in our own pride and
insistent self-reliance, we often forget that option. We would not be asking for aid for ourselves against other peoples, after all. We would be asking for aid for all peoples against an implacable force we don't completely understand. Thank you, Karal, for not being afraid to state what should have been obvious. I will have the various notables draft up notices to their Temples to that effect." Now Karal blushed, but with pleasure, and Altra's deep purr vibrating his feet, was all he needed to gauge the depth of the Firecat's approval. He glanced sideways at Lo'isha to find the Shin'a'in gazing at him with a thoughtful smile that broadened when their eyes met.

Well, let's see if they're still pleased with me after this...

"Please, Queen Selenay?" he added. "Don't exclude the Empire in those
prayers. The people of the Empire haven't done anything to hurt us, and
by now they must be in terrible straits. They've been suffering the
mage-storms all this time, and from all Sejanes has told us, they need
magic, they use it everywhere. For you, it would be as if fire suddenly
stopped giving off heat."

She nodded very slowly, with just a touch of reluctance. "I will
remember to phrase it that way," she promised. "And to remember that
we have no quarrel with all of the people of the Empire, only with those who harmed us." He stole a second glance at Lo'isha, then one at
Sejanes.

Lo'isha still seemed pleased with him, and the old mage positively
beamed.

And what about Altra, Vkandis' own representative?

"What of me? I think you have done a very good thing." Altra's purr did
not let up at all. "You manage to keep in mind that a nation is made up
of people, most of whom have little or no control over what their
leaders do. That is twice now, that you have urged mercy, and that is
very good." Even for Vkandis, notorious for being a vengeful god?

Especially for Vkandis; please remember that religions are made up of
people, most of whom have very little control over what their priests
decree is doctrine. Keep in mind that given that the priests and the
people have free will and the means to exercise it, gods may not always
be able to control their priests either. So what the priests say, and
the people believe, is not always the whole truth.

Karal blinked at that. Altra evidently decided Karal was ready for a
little more doctrine smashing.

Time for a parable. Think of a very wealthy, very reclusive man with a
dangerous reputation; say a former mercenary.

Assume he lives in a town but seldom leaves his home. Nevertheless, and
not wanting people to think he is trying to buy good opinion-he sends
his servants out secretly, day after day, to help the worthy poor, the
sick, the helpless. Then one day while he is coming in his front gate, a woman with a baby is attacked by ruffians, and he reacts as he was trained, draws his sword, and cuts them all down in the blink of an eye. Say that later, in the inquiry, it was learned that those same ruffians were old enemies of his, looking for his new home. Now what are the townsfolk going to say about him?" Karal knew very well what they would say. They would know nothing about the countless acts of mercy and charity that defined the man, they would know only the single moment of public bloodshed. At the least, they would call him vengeful, they would fear his temper, and might avoid his company. If there were those who envied him, it might even be whispered that he arranged for the attack on the woman in order to have an excuse for killing the gang. And although there would be a shred of truth in the stories of vengeance, it would by no means be the entire truth.

Vkandis-any god-is far more than His people make Him," Altra continued.
"It is the responsibility of the priest to lead them to that
understanding, so that they do not attempt to limit Him to what they
know." That was what he had been groping for, these past several weeks!
All the pieces for understanding had been there, but he just hadn't put
them together in so elegant and simple a whole.

And just at the moment, the meeting is going on without your
note-taking, "Altra added, bending to clean a paw with fastidious
attention to detail. "Life is attention to both the large and the small, little brother. Pay heed to the sun, but watch your feet, or you'll fall ingloriously on your nose." He bent hastily to his paper, with a soft chuckle inaudible to anyone else.

The meeting went on for far too long, but Firesong managed to annoy
enough useless Councillors to guarantee that the next meeting would be
much shorter.

It would have to be; Firesong had also cut short any attempt by the
Councillors to turn the meeting into an accusation and-blame session
(with most of both being aimed at the group in the Tower). That, Karal
found difficult to believe the first time one of them started. They
seemed to be cherishing a variety of bizarre ideas about what was going
on here, not the least of which was that they would be safe when the
final Storm hit, and those outside the Tower would be the ones in the
most danger.

"What was wrong with those people?" he asked Lyam in amazement, as the
members of their own group broke up and went off on their interrupted
studies. "Where did they get those ideas?" The young hertasi shrugged,
his tail beating softly against the floor where they both sat,
organizing their notes and putting up their writing supplies. "They
think we wallow in luxury here, that we spend all our time in idle
pursuits and speculations that have no bearing on work or reality. They
half don't believe in the Storms; they think we've got a fabulous life
here and we're prolonging our stay here to continue to enjoy this
glorious place and our freedom from work and responsibility." Karal
glanced around at their "luxurious surroundings," taking in the elegant
appointments. Well, the inlaid stone floors were certainly beautiful,
and there wasn't a ceiling like this one in all of Karse and Valdemar
combined. But in between True, the Shin'a'in pallets were colorful, and
comfortable, but they weren't the equivalent of anything in the guest
quarters at the Palace at Haven. And as for the rest, he didn't think
that a single one of those Councillors had ever eaten, slept, or lived
like this, and he didn't think any of them would ever want to. It wasn't as bad as the poorest Karsite inn workers endured, and in some ways it was a little more comfortable than the conditions of Vkandis' novices, but those highborn Councillors would probably think they'd been exiled to hard living at the end of the world.

And what they'd make of butter-tea, I don't know. They might consider it a form of penance.

"I don't know, Lyam," he said, finally. "Is this some sort of
delusionary illness they're under?" The lizard did not have many facial
expressions, but he could and did cock up a brow ridge. "Actually, it's
distance. A fair number of our people back in White Gryphon assumed that because we had been given k'sheyna Vale that we must be living in the midst of incredible luxury. Anything that's far off must be better than anything at home, you see." He snorted. "Actually, if you want luxury I'd recommend the courts of the Black Kings. I've been there, so I know. Silk sheets, private gardens, food worth dying for-now that is what I would call luxury!" He smacked his lips, or what passed for lips.

Karal sighed and shook his head, and Lyam patted his back.

"Cheer up! The ones who think we're shirking are all idiots, and
Firesong is going to get them to go away. If that Queen of theirs
doesn't find them something harmless to do to keep them occupied, that
is. I know his kind. He'll keep chipping at them until they quit." Karal chuckled at Lyam's all too accurate assessment. "He can be diplomatic when he wants to be," he felt impelled to point out.

"Of course he can, but diplomacy is for when you've got time, and that's the one thing we're short of." Lyam shook his head as his expression turned grave. "Karal, I'm going to get serious for a moment; I want you to tell me something, and be honest. You've worked with these people-Firesong, An'desha, Sejanes, and all-for a long time. Can they do this?

Can they really find an answer to the last Storm? Or should I look for a deep, dark den to hide in and hope it doesn't get melted shut behind
me?" Karal closed his eyes for a moment, taken by surprise by the sudden question. Perhaps that was why Lyam had asked it, so that he wouldn't have a chance to prevaricate.

"If anyone can, they can," he said at last. "An'desha holds the actual
memories of Urtho's enemy Ma'ar, who was the second-most-powerful mage
of the time of the Cataclysm. I just don't know if it's possible for
mortal creatures to save this situation." Lyam sighed. "I was afraid
you were going to say that. "He slumped abruptly, and looked up at Karal with an unreadable expression. "Let's talk about our girls," he
suggested. "You and I can't do a blazing thing to help them, so let's
talk about our girls, eh?" In a mercurial change of mood, he grinned,
showing a fine set of pointed teeth. "Nothing like girls to get your
mind off your troubles."

"Or give you a different set of troubles to think about!" Karal laughed, only too happy to oblige.

Tarm found them both commiserating over the way that females had to
approach any difficulty sideways, like a crab, instead of meeting it
head-on, a trait it seemed both hertasi and human females shared. He
stood within earshot for some time, simply listening, with his pointed
ears pricked sharply upward, evidently waiting for a natural break in
the conversation before interrupting.

Lyam, have you any notion where the Shin'a'in stored the gray bag of
books we brought with us?" he asked. "I find I need a reference."

"It's easier for me to find it than tell you where it is," the hertasi
said, leaping to his feet. "Stay right here; I'll bring the whole bag."
He scampered down the stairs to the workroom, and Tarm turned his
attention to Karal. "You and my apprentice seem to be getting on well,"
he observed mildly.

"We have a great deal in common, sir," Karal replied politely. "As you
probably noticed." Tarm's mouth dropped open in a lupine grin. "Young
women, for one thing. Alas, I fear I could never give you reasonable
advice on that subject; my kind are neuters, but by birth rather than by oath, as our Shin'a'in friends are." That left Karal more confused than enlightened. "All kyree are neuters? And where do the Kal'enedral come into it?" It took Tarm a few moments to explain that, no, all kyree were not neuters, but that the neuters tended to be the scholars,
tale-spinners, poets, and historians. Then it took him a bit longer to
explain the oaths of the Sworn, and how the Goddess herself rendered
them literally sexless, which was why it was so very difficult for
anyone to be accepted by Her into Her service.

Karal was not precisely appalled, but he was certainly baffled." I can't imagine why anyone would want to be Sworn!" he said to the kyree, "I mean, I beg your pardon, but-" Don't apologize; I don't regret being
neuter, and over the years I've often considered myself fortunate not to have to put up with what you do," Tarm replied thoughtfully…As for the Sworn, whether Swordsworn or Goddess-sworn, I can well imagine any
number of circumstances where a human would find the burden of sexuality intolerable. Such tales that brought them to that condition may be sad, even horrible, but at least among the Shin'a'in they have a refuge. And for some-well if their life has been spent entirely in the sphere of the intellectual, then there is no sacrifice." Karal took a moment to look for An'desha, and finally found him, deep in conference with - Lo'isha and another black-clad Shin'a'in. "I suppose I can think of at least one case where memories might be intolerable," he said slowly.

Tarm followed his gaze. "The thought had occurred to me as well. If we
live...  If. There was that word again, the one he thought about all
the time, but did his best not to mention. "Are we likely not to?" he
asked soberly.

As if called by his gaze, An'desha left the other Shin'a'in and walked
over to them, just in time to catch Tarm's reply.

I don't know." Tarm was quite sober. "I came here knowing that there was a good chance we would not, and so did Lyam. It is possible that what we record will serve to help others cope with the next Cataclysm in another millennia or two. Or it may help the survivors of this one. It seems that the only way we can be assured of survival is through the mechanism you yourself suggested."

"Divine intervention?" he said, dryly. "Ah, but there's a catch. We
can't count on it; if we do, we certainly won't get it." An'desha
nodded as he sat down beside Karal. "That is the way of things with the
Star-Eyed, at least, and this is the heart of Her land. If we were to
call upon anyone, it should be Kal'enel. But Loisha says that She has
been silent of late, as if She is no more certain of what is to come
than we are." So what are we to do?" Tarm asked. "When the gods
themselves are silent, what is a mortal to do"

"I don't know," An'desha admitted.

"You might try calling on old friends," suggested a helpful voice from
above their heads, as brilliant golden light flooded down upon them.

Tarm jumped straight up in the air and came down with his eyes wide and
his hackles up. Lyam, whose head was just poking up out of the hatchway
leading to the stair to the workroom, had to grab for the edge of the
hatch to keep from falling. Even Karal, who had seen this phenomenon
before, and An'desha, to whom it was familiar, gaped with astonishment
as they rose to their feet.

Swooping down from the ceiling in a spiraling dance that involved
Firesong's ecstatic firebird Aya, were a pair of mansized hawks with
feathers of flame. They landed with the grace of a dancer and the
weightlessness of a puff of down, and the moment they touched the
ground, they transformed into a man and a woman who still had a
suggestion of bird about them. The man was dressed as a Shin'a'in
shaman, but the woman was all Hawkbrother.

The Shin'a'in present all reacted the same way; they did not drop to
their knees or grovel, but went rigid with the profoundest respect, and
with naked worship in their eyes.

What-is-this?" Tarm managed, every hair on his body standing straight
out.

"I am Dawnfire, and this is Tre'valen," the woman said, looking down at
Tarm with a smile. Her eyes were open wide, as were his, and they were
perhaps the strangest thing of all about the two, for those eyes were
the bright-spangle~d black of a star-filled night sky. "We're old
friends of An'desha." Altra and Florian appeared from one of the farther rooms, and made their way across the floor to the little gathering, and it seemed that they were the only creatures in the building capable of moving. They paused a few paces away from the bright creatures, and both made little bows of greeting in unison.

"Tre'valen and Dawnfire are Avatars of Kal'enel, Tarm, An'desha said,
very quietly. "And although I would not have claimed the privilege of
saying they were my friends, they have been very good to me." Tre'valen
laughed. "Well, claim it or not, we are your friends, little brother.
And more than that, we're here to help you as much as we can." That
astonishing statement broke the spell holding everyone frozen in
silence, and everyone in the Tower converged on the pair except for
Karal, who sat abruptly down.

We have Altra for Vkandis, Florian for the gods of Valdemar and now this. What is that Shin'a'in saying~ Be careful what you ask for?

Well, he had asked for Divine aid; whether it would be enough remained
to be seen.

"All I know is this," King Tremane said, rubbing his temple in a gesture of nervous habit, "I haven't even tried to light a candle
magically for weeks, but my mage-energy is going somewhere. If you can
tell me where, I'll feel a great deal better." Darkwind nodded,
squinting a little against the brilliant sunlight streaming in through
the windows of the King's Tower. That was what everyone called it
now-"the King's Tower," as Shonar had become, by default, the new
capital of Hardorn. It was a small and slightly shabby residence for a
King, but Hardorn itself had seen better days. It would do Tremane no
harm to be seen putting the welfare of his new country above his own
comforts.

After a frenzy of make-do preparations, there had been a tiny coronation ceremony, wherein Duke Tremane had become King Tremane, and had been presented with a crown that (like the country) was rather the worse for wear. It even appeared to have been flattened before someone managed to wrestle it back into shape.

Still, it was-at least now-the authentic crown of Hardorn, and there was something to be said for that.

Tremane had accepted it graciously, worn it for the coronation. Then
immediately went to his private possessions and had a few things melted
down and made into a very slim, gold band with minimal ornamentation
that bore a remarkable resemblance to his ducal coronet.

That, in turn, had borne a remarkable resemblance to the slender coronet that Selenay wore, but Darkwind didn't see any reason to mention that. Frankly, the thin band looked dignified on Tremane's balding head, as opposed to the heavy crown. Even if it hadn't been battered, the original crown still looked rather silly, at least to Darkwind's eyes.

Crowns. This conference isn't about crowns. He turned his attention
instead to Tremane's statement. "I think," he said slowly, "that your
energy is going into the land-at least in making queries of where and
what problems there are-and that where it goes tells you what places are most damaged. I suspect that those places producing monstrosities are the most heavily damaged, which is how you have been managing to
pinpoint their lairs. You can probably stop the drainage if you choose."

Tremane considered that for a moment, then shrugged. "On the whole, I
don't see why I should bother. It isn't a critical drain, and it isn't
paining me or making me physically weaker. The only things I might want
to do magically are things the earth-sense is giving me anyway. I just
wanted to know where my energies were going; it could have been due to
something more sinister." That was astute of him, and a reflection on
the changes in his thinking that he did not immediately assume it was
something sinister and begin looking for an enemy, "Tayledras Healing
Adepts can send their energies out to damaged land deliberately,"
Darkwind told him. "And they can redirect energy from elsewhere, using
themselves as a conduit. You seem to have many of the same abilities,
given to you by the earth-sense, rather than by accident of birth or
because of training."

"Interesting." Tremane replied, his brows knitting slightly with
thought. He leaned toward Darkwind as something occurred to him. "You
know, there's another thing; I had assumed that I'd have earth-sense for all of Hardorn, from border to border, but every time one of those
groups comes in to give me their-their pledge-it seems as if I can sense more than I could before. It's difficult to explain; it's as if I knew the place was there, but it was blank or shadowed to me. It's analogous to seeing into a room that was darkened and is now illuminated."

That may be precisely what is happening," Darkwind admitted." When
someone has an affinity for a given area-usually a homeland, or at least the village they grew up in-a magical link naturally forms between them and the place. Location and divination spells work just a little easier when they involve that person's home area as a target, for example, over places the person may have been to only once. When these people open themselves up to your rule, they may also very well be opening up their home-affinity connection to you, too. Or, well, it could also be that the earth you take from them in the seisin ceremony links you to that place. It's fairly obvious to me that the seisin ceremony itself is a primitive piece of contamination-magic. As for details of how you can use that to advantage, I don't know; you'd have to ask someone who already has the sense." He hadn't missed the hesitation before Tremane picked the word "pledge." Poor Tremane was enduring a great deal of personal embarrassment for the sake of these people, if only they knew it. Little groups were trickling in all the time to swear fealty to their new king, and they were using an ancient ritual they referred to as "seisin," a ritual probably as old as the earth-taking ritual. There was no doubt in Darkwind's mind that it was just as potent as the earth-taking, and just as primitive.

And it profoundly embarrassed the urbane and efficient Tremane, as most
"primitive" rituals would embarrass him.

Nevertheless, it was effective, and he didn't think he needed to point
out to Tremane that the reason he could sense another new area every
time his new liegemen swore to him was that he literally was adding to
the area he had "taken." It was entirely possible that the pinch of
earth he had ingested at the ceremony that gave him this new power had
been carefully made of a bit of every soil the priests could get their
hands on, for that very reason, thus adding in the extra power gain from contagion.

"Speaking of your new subjects, Tremane, there's another group coming in at the gate now," said Elspeth, who happened to be standing by the
window. "They're pretty heavily armed and I see someone with a pennon at the front." She frowned and shaded her eyes with one hand, looking down into the courtyard. "'Is that-yes, it is, four sets of
strawberry-leaves. It's a baronial coronet on the pennon-head. Congratulations! You've hooked one of the few big fish remaining in Hardorn." Darkwind barely suppressed a smirk..For the first time since I've been with you, ke'chara, I've just seen a Herald... act as a Herald." Elspeth just made a short choking sound, while Gwena tittered in their heads.

Tremane sighed, but it was with visible relief. "I'd better go right
down and greet them properly, then," he said. "Can we resume our meeting later?"

"No reason why not," Elspeth said for both of them. "We'll meet you down there with Gwena and the full panoply. If you've gotten a baron, we'd better confirm your treaty and association with the Alliance." Darkwind smiled; this was not, by any means, the first time that Gwena, he, and Elspeth had dressed up and assembled to impress the new liegemen. It had rather startled some of them to see a "horse" indoors, until they saw Elspeth's white uniform and realized that it wasn't a horse at all, but a Companion.

Tremane laughed unexpectedly; it seemed to Darkwind that the new King
laughed quite a bit more than he would have expected, perhaps because he had a strong sense of humor about himself. "You should hear the things my housekeeping staff has to say about hoofprints in the wood floors. Do you have the same problem in Valdemar?

"Sadly, all the time," Elspeth told.him. "We've never found a way to
prevent them, and we've tried everything." She moved away from the
window with her arms crossed over her chest and a twinkle of amusement
in her eye. "A silver piece says this one will be more impressed by
Darkwind and Vree than by Gwena and me."

"I'll take that bet," Tremane responded easily. Darkwind stood up,
smiling mostly to himself. Tremane had become much more relaxed around
them since the earth-taking ceremony, treating them more often as
colleagues and equals than as foreign ambassadors. Darkwind thought he
knew why, although he doubted if Tremane himself was aware of the reason. The land "knows" Elspeth and Gwena; the Valdemarans have always been good stewards of the land and good friends to Hardorn since Vanyel's time. It also "knows" me, since serving and healing the land are what the Tayledras were born and bred for. Because the land knows and trusts us, it is making Tremane feel comfortable around us and inclining him to trust us as well.

Tremane's new link with Hardorn was going to affect him in any number of ways that he was not always going to be conscious of but Darkwind
didn't see anything but good in that prospect. Very occasionally Tremane grew momentarily disoriented by some new information the earth-sense threw at him, but for the most part he was coping well. Eventually, as Hardorn recovered from the damage that had been done to it, Tremane would find that the land sustained him in moments of stress, rather than the reverse.

There was a knock on the door, and Elspeth joined Darkwind as Tremane's
aide-now styled his "seneschal," though he still acted and probably
thought of himself as a military aide-de-camp-entered diffidently.

"Sir-I mean, Your Majesty-there is a party below who-"

"I know, I'll be there directly," Tremane interrupted. "You know the
drill by now; go see to the arrangements, and as soon as I look
appropriate I'll be down. Blasted crown," he muttered, as the aide
saluted, recollected again that Tremane was a King now and not a
military commander, and bowed himself out. "Where did I put it this
time?"

"Where you always put it, Tremane," Elspeth laughed. "Locked up in the chest."

"Right, with the robes that are too damned heavy to wear and not warm
enough to make any difference in the Great Hall." Tremane swore with
annoyance under his breath, and Darkwind wondered how he would ever have survived being made Emperor if he disliked the panoply of rank so much. "I won't miss winter one tiny bit. Thank you; I'll see you in the Hall and we can get this nonsense over with. Again."

"Oh, this time it looks as if it will be more than worth the effort,"
Elspeth assured him, as she preceded Darkwind into the hallway. "Will
it?" he asked her, as they descended the staircase to their own
quarters.

"I think he'll be pleasantly surprised," she said. "I don't know much
about Hardorn heraldry, but I think this new fellow may be the
highest-ranking native to survive Ancar, and that means he'll be
bringing a fair piece of the country with him. Not to mention his
escort, and they looked as if they probably represent some major armed
forces."

"So how old is this baron?" Darkwind asked. He had a good reason for
asking; the surviving nobles of Hardorn tended to be mostly very old, or very young. The former had survived by being no threat to Ancar, and the latter by being hidden by their relatives, usually with reliable farmers or other family retainers.

"I'd say early teens; fourteen, fifteen at the most," Elspeth replied.

"Hence the reason he'll be more impressed by a Hawkbrother than a
Herald. He may not even know what a Herald is, until someone tells him." Darkwind shook a finger at her.

"You're stealing Tremane's silver, you little cheat."

"Then he shouldn't bet with me. He ought to know by now that I never
propose a bet unless I'm certain of the outcome." She nodded at the
guards on either side of their door and opened it herself. Their own
guards from Valdemar stationed inside the door brought their weapons up
until they saw who was entering; then they grinned sheepishly and
returned to a deceptively relaxed posture.

"Is that any way to treat a monarch?" Darkwind asked her, and sighed as
he began climbing the stair to their private quarters." Never mind;
forget I asked. I suppose it won't hurt "I never treat Tremane casually
in front of anyone else," Elspeth reminded him, taking the narrow
staircase a little behind him. "This is calculated behavior; it shows
him that I consider him my equal and will treat him as such. And as
Mother often reminds me, the fact that I abdicated in favor of the twins does not make me any less a princess. It's not a bad thing in this case to have one of the Blood Royal acting as ambassador."

"True, all of it." The next floor was the purview of their guards and
staff, who were currently lounging about, engaged in various off-duty
occupations in the main room of their circular suite. Elspeth and
Darkwind both waved at the rest of their entourage as they passed
through, but did not stop on that floor. He continued the conversation.
"Well, I take it you think this latest delegation is worth bringing out
the full formal gear."

"Every feather, bead, bell and bauble," Elspeth said firmly. "Full Whites for me, and the circlet, with badges and medals. And don't pretend you don't like to dress up, my love."

"I wouldn't dream of it." The scent of the balsam incense he used both
to perfume the air of their private quarters and to discourage pests met them as they reached their own floor. "Unlike you so-called 'civilized' peoples, we Tayledras know how to create clothing that is impressive, functional, and comfortable."

"Don't put me in that 'civilized' category!" she protested. "We Valdemarans feel precisely the same way! Well, we Heralds do, anyway, and that category includes the ruling family."

"Impressive?" He raised an eyebrow even as he went to the chest
containing his clothing and raised the lid. "I'll grant you the
functional and comfortable, but you Valdemarans have no sense of style,
or at least, you Heralds don't. You horrified my poor hertasi with your
uniform, you know. They thought you were wearing the sacks your clothes
were supposed to be carried in." They "argued" about clothing, style,
and decoration happily all the time they were changing into their formal clothing, she into the Whites that he had redesigned, with the additions of rank, and he into the most elaborate outfit he owned, although by the standards set by Firesong, he was rather drab. His draped clothing of scarlet, gold, and warm brown was augmented by a sculpted leather tunic with a padded shoulder, and when he was dressed, Vree left his perch by the window and lofted straight to him, to land on the shoulder with a fraction of the impact he would have used in making a landing on a perch. Having Vree on his shoulder instead of his wrist served a double function. First, no falconer would ever have let one of his birds sit on his shoulder; that was a tacit invitation to facial scarring or losing an eye if something startled the bird or if it suddenly decided that this was a good time to strike out for freedom. This marked him to the knowledgeable as a Hawkbrother with no doubt. Only a bondbird could be trusted to sit this way, with no jesses, no hood, and no means of "control" over him. And second, if the exotic clothing would not set him apart from the rest, then Vree, who was much larger than any forestgyre or other gyrfalcon these people had ever seen, certainly would.

Elspeth, who had a lifetime of rapid changes-of-outfit to fall back on,
waited with an exaggerated expression of boredom for him to finish his
belt- adjustments. "Bring your head over here," Elspeth commanded, the
feathered and beaded ornaments meant to be braided into his hair
dangling from one hand. She already wore the beaded feather he had given her as a token of love, one of Vree's own primaries, braided into her own.

"Should I leave the rest of me here?" he suggested. She made an
exasperated tsking sound, and pushed him down into a chair. Vree flared
his wings to stay balanced. She wove the feathered cords deftly into his long hair, as cleverly as if she had been born in an ekele rather than a palace.

"There," she said, bending to kiss him, then rapping him lightly on the
top of his head with her knuckles. "Now you're presentable."

"So I am. And so are you." He rose and headed for the door, this time
taking the lead down the stairs. The entire procedure, from the time
they entered the room to this moment, had taken a fraction of the time
it would take Tremane to get ready. But then again, they were not going
to have to be laced into ceremonial armor either.

Their own entourage was so used to this by now that there had been no
need for Elspeth to ask anyone to go get Gwena, drape her with her
ceremonial barding and bells, and bring her to the Great Hall. The
Companion was already waiting for them when they arrived at the side
entrance they would use to get in place before either Tremane arrived or the delegation was allowed to enter. The members of Tremane's staff were quite used to seeing a "horse" wandering about the halls now, and let her go her own way when they saw her. Waiting with her were all of the dignitaries that could be hurried into formal clothing or uniforms on short notice, though there was always a chance that not all of them were what they were dressed up to be. Once, after most of Tremane's staff had gone to a meeting with the town council, Darkwind recalled, someone had actually borrowed an Imperial officer's tunic and a handful of medals and coerced the cook into it for one of these ceremonies! Since the folk coming to pledge their loyalty were likely never to set eyes on Shonar again, it did no harm to anyone to have impersonators fill in the ranks of Tremane's Court if it was necessary, to give the impression that every petty lordling with a handful of men was being given the highest of honors.

This time the reverse was true, for not only were all the real Officials present, but the mayor of Shonar, Sandar Giles, had been on his way for a meeting with one of Tremane's underlings when he saw the procession of armed men heading for Tremane's manor. He'd sent a now-exhausted runner hastily back to the town for his mayoral finery~ and now stood waiting with the rest while the servants did what they could to make the Great Hall bearable.

"One of Tremane's mages is in there, warming the place up," Sandar was
saying to Tremane's aide, who was looking distinctly uncomfortable in
his nonregulation, heavily embroidered tabard. It looked like-and
probably was-something that had been found in an attic and been pressed
into service as the "official" clothing of His Majesty's Seneschal.

A great deal of the Court garments had been made out of salvaged
material or dredged out of attics. For that matter, Sandar Giles' outfit showed a touch of the moth's tooth around the squirrel-fur trim and the woolen hood, as if he had gone to storage for his grandfather's mayoral outfit. Small wonder Tremane has difficulty taking all this seriously.

His "court" is hardly up to the standards of even his old ducal
household, I should imagine. Elspeth and I are the only ones who are not threadbare and much-mended. But none of the various delegations that had come riding or walking in to Shonar had looked any better, and most had looked much worse. By the current standards of the country Tremane's Court probably looked remarkably prosperous.

Before this is all over, we may look back on these times fondly, as the
days when we were all doing well. It was a grim thought, but one which
he and Elspeth often shared. If the mage-storms could not be held
back-Well, there was nothing to be gained by dwelling on that now. Under Tremane's direction, people were readying themselves for worse to come, and Hardornens, unlike Valdemarans, were perfectly willing to believe in "worse to come." Once the ceremony was over, but just before the delegation left for home, Tremane would give this new lot their
directions on surviving the final Storm, as he had every other
delegation so far. That those directions were mainly guesses hardly
mattered; they would have direction and confidence that he had the
situation on the way to being under control.

The door opened, and a thin, gawky man came through it, a fellow with
thinning hair, who squinted at them from behind a pair of glass lenses
set in a lead frame that rested on his nose. "It's warm in there now,
and it should last through your ceremony," the mage said, and made
shooing motions as if they were a bunch of hens he wanted to drive
before him. "In with you now! The sooner you get the ceremony over with, less likely that the spell will wear off before it's over!" None of them needed a second invitation; the hallway was freezing, and the promise of warmth was all the encouragement they required to move quickly.

Elspeth and Gwena hung back until the others were inside, and Darkwind
remained with them. Gwena was quite careful whenever she came inside the manor, and despite the complaints from Tremane's household staff, she left very little sign of her presence after these ceremonies. Some of the Hardornen warriors, who forgot to remove spurs or came striding
wearing heavy hobnailed boots, did worse damage than Gwena, who picked
up each hoof neatly and set it down again*m with the greatest of care.

Gwena was arrayed in the "riderless" version of Companion full dress; no saddle, but with a blue and silver blanket cut like her barding
decorated at all the points with silver bells, a blue-dyed leather
hackamore with silver tassels at the cheekpieces, and reins bedecked
with more silver bells. Had there been more time to ready her, the
decorations included even bells and blue ribbons to braid into her mane
and tail, but she had to be content with her mane and tail flowing
freely.

"You look lovely, as always," Darkwind told her.

Thank you," she replied coyly, and gave her head a tiny toss so that the bells chimed. "I'm afraid we four are making a More impressive show than Tremane's own Court, but that can't be helped."

"At least we are making our support unmistakable," he pointed out, as
they took their appointed places among the rest.

There was some shuffling as the dignitaries of Tremane's Court sorted
themselves out, then the young Seneschal nodded his head and the main
doors were flung open to admit the latest delegation.

At the head of the procession was a youngster-no boy, but young, too
young to need a razor--of about fourteen. Under his scarlet cloak and
tabard, he wore full armor that had seen hard use, and his eyes were far too old to belong to that young face. The dented and slightly tarnished baronial circlet about his brow did not detract from the painful dignity with which he carried himself, and by his build and the muscles beneath the armor, he was clearly no stranger to real fighting. Behind him, more men in full armor followed in pairs, ranging in age from powerful graybeards to men only a little older than the boy-baron. One of the two immediately behind the boy carried a small wooden box. They paraded in slowly, surveying every person there with suspicion, and Darkwind smothered a smile as the boy's eyes lit on the Alliance envoys, widened, and flitted from Elspeth to Darkwind and back, finally remaining on Darkwind.

"I won," she mindspoke unnecessarily.

The entire delegation came to a halt at the foot of the low dais. By
now, several of the Shonar artisans were at work on a real throne for
Tremane, since the original throne of Hardorn had been lost in looting
and fires, but it would not be finished for another week or two. In
place of a real throne was a prop throne, made for an Imperial
theatrical production, and modified by those same artisans. They had
sanded off the gilt paint, which had probably looked fine at a distance
but only looked cheap and shoddy up close, and had removed all of the
glasspaste jewels set into the back. What had been carved wolves
adorning the back were now hounds, the Hardornen symbol of fidelity. The swords making up the legs and arms, and interlaced on the back below the hounds, had become tree branches, and the wood had been rubbed with oils and polished until it shone. The shabby cushions had been replaced with brown velvet purloined from drapes taken from storage--However, in the course of all the recarving, the wood had been pared down in some places to a precarious extent, and Tremane had been warned to be very careful when sitting on it.

Everyone was going to breathe a sigh of relief when the new throne took
the place of the old. It could be taken for a terrible omen if Tremane's throne collapsed beneath him in the middle of one of these ceremonies. Tremane had good-naturedly commented that having a fake Imperial throne recarved into a fragile Hardornen throne was entirely appropriate.

Tremane kept the delegation waiting just long enough for them to get a
good look at the rest of his Court, and to take in the banners on the
wall behind his throne, which represented those who had already come in
and brought him their pledges.

Most of those who had sworn their oaths had taken their banners from the arms of the former nobles of the region, although more often than not there had been no one who actually qualified to take those arms. Tremane had solved that quickly enough by confirming the delegates in their places as the new lords, and bestowing the old titles upon them as soon as their pledges were confirmed.

Sadly, besides a number of ancient titles going begging, there was
plenty of empty land lying fallow and abandoned, but Tremane had plans
for that, too. Once summer arrived, it would be settled, and former
Imperial officers who were ready to retire would be ennobled and put in
place as overlords.

They would be allowed to take with them as many Imperial soldiers as
wished to retire to farming and had found brides among the Hardornens;
these would be given freehold-grants on reclaimed farms. Thus, the newly ennobled would have garrison and work force in one, and the newly wed couples would have more of a base for their start than most. After that particular announcement, the number of engagements and handfastings had skyrocketed, and if some of the good farmers and fathers of Shonar had been a bit reluctant to welcome Imperial sons-in-law at first, their reluctance had evaporated when they learned of the royal bride-price the foreign sons-in-law would bring, thanks to the foresight of their new King.

Darkwind hid a smile as the young Baron kept taking covert glances at
him, as if the youngster had never seen anything so outlandish in his
life. Darkwind had been told that rumors of his presence and powers were circulating out beyond Shonar's walls, rumors which got more and more fantastic with every league distant from the city. He wondered what the boy had heard, to make him look so wide-eyed.

There was a bit of a stir at the door just off the dais, and Tremane's
major-domo stepped inside.

The major-domo rapped three times on the floor with the butt of his
staff. "His Majesty, King Tremane of Hardorn!" the man announced in
ringing tones, his clear, commanding voice showing precisely why he had
been plucked out of the ranks to fill this position. "And his Majesty's
Chief Advisers!" Tremane and his four Chief Advisers filed in with
ponderous dignity. Of course, his Chief Advisers were also members of
his bodyguard, but their weapons were not carried in an obvious fashion, and there was nothing about them to advertise that fact. Tremane wore his ceremonial armor, the Hardornen Crown, a tapestry tabard with his own arms (requisitioned from his former squire), and was draped in a fine cloak of silk edged in heavily embroidered silk trim purloined from the same curtains that had provided him with material for the seat cushions of his throne. The cloak was also part of the props for some unknown play; it was ridiculously long and required the services of two small boys recruited as pages to carry the trailing end.

Both pages were from the group of five children that Tremane and his men had rescued from the grip of the first killing blizzard; Tobe and Racky were their names, and they took their duty as Tremane's pages very seriously. They had been nicely outfitted in page costumes cut down from Imperial officers' uniforms by their mothers, who nearly burst with pride at the notion that their boys were serving the new King.

Tremane took his seat gingerly, which translated into a ponderous sort
of dignity to outside eyes. The pages arranged his royal mantle out
before his feet, like a peacock's tail, just on sanity's side of
preposterous, and retired to their positions behind the throne. The
young baron tensed as Tremane nodded to him.

"Baron Peregryn, I understand that you are from Adair," he said quietly. "You are a very welcome addition to the Court." Darkwind watched the boy and his entourage to see if they noticed the relative informality of Tremane's address. After much consideration, he had decided to completely do away with the royal plural, because Ancar had been so rabid in its use. Darkwind saw two of the older men exchange brief nods, and it seemed to him that they wore expressions of satisfaction.

The young Baron took two steps to the foot of the throne and went
immediately to one knee, and the rest of his entourage followed his
example in dropping to theirs. "I have come to offer you my pledge, King Tremane," the youngster said, in a high tenor that trembled only a
little. "And in token of this pledge, I bring you seisin of my lands,
and those of the men pledged in their turn to my service." Young Baron
Peregryn reached behind him without looking, and the man carrying the
small wooden casket placed it in his outstretched hand. Darkwind watched their movements carefully, analyzing everything they did, and making some guesses about the relationship the Baron had with his men.

He is the acknowledged leader, no matter how young he appears to be, and he and the older men have worked and fought together a great deal. They trust him-and he trusts them. He has youth, enthusiasm, and charisma, and they have experience, and they all work to weave these things together.

This one will be worth watching for stories and songs of noble deeds.

The boy opened the casket and held it out to Tremane, who took a double
handful of soil from within and held it for a moment.

"Thus do I, Tremane, King of Hardorn, take seisin of the lands of
Peregryn, Baron of Adair, and of those who are pledged to him," he
proclaimed in a voice suitable for a battlefield oration. He dropped the soil back into the casket, and held out his hand to Tobe, the older of his two pages. Tobe handed him a small dagger, and with his face
completely unflinching, he slashed his palm shallowly, held his hand
over the casket, and allowed his blood to run into it and mix with the
earth inside.

"Thus do I, Tremane, King of Hardorn by acknowledgment of the soil of
Hardorn itself, give the pledge of my body to the lands of Peregryn,
Baron of Adair, and of those who are vowed to his service." The other
page, Racky, took the dagger and handed him a linen cloth, which he used to bind the wound across his palm. Meanwhile Tobe took the casket from Peregryn, mixed the soil and blood thoroughly with a miniature spade, and then used the spade to divide the moistened soil between the
original casket and a small box. Tobe handed the casket back to
Peregryn, who received it with the same reverence as he would a holy
relic. Tobe gave the box to the Seneschal, who would take it to the
cellars of the manor and add it to the urn of soil already there.

All of this mixing and dividing gave Tremane a chance to recover from
the shock of adding yet another stretch of land to his "senses."
Darkwind knew that by the time he reached his own quarters again the
slash would be completely healed-and now was the moment when he would
confirm his right to be King by telling Peregryn what, if anything, was
wrong with his lands.

"If anything?" No, there will be a great deal wrong, there. Adair is supposed to be in the north, and there would have been reflections off the Iftel Border before Firesong and the rest instigated the Counter-Storm.

Tremane's eyes had the glazed look that meant he "felt" something very
strong, which probably meant very bad. "Your lands, Baron Peregryn,
include a small river valley, bounded by a lake, a hill shaped like a
sleeping cat, and a forest of pines," he said slowly, as if he were
talking in his sleep. Peregryn's eyes widened, and several of the men
behind him began whispering urgently together. "Beneath that hill there
is a cave, and within that cave there is a place where magic is pooling
and stagnating. Living there is a beast, changed by magic into a
monster. You cannot kill it directly; it will cost too many lives. You
cannot poison it. To kill it you must feed it a cow which has been fed
on datura-flower for three days. It will gorge itself, and the action of the flower will make it sleepy and it will go to the cave to hide. You must then collapse the cave or brick it up, sealing it inside." Tremane went on, reciting the locations of several more pockets of trouble, together with suggested solutions for eliminating the problems. Peregryn wouldn't be able to implement all or even most of those solutions until summer, but at least now he and his men knew where all the trouble spots were, and would be able to deal with them one at a time. As Tremane spoke, more and more of Peregryn's men began whispering together, their expressions taking on the slightly stunned look of men who were hearing something they could not believe, and yet could verify. Evidently several of Tremane's revelations matched problems they already knew about-and knew that Tremane could not have learned by any normal means. Finally, Tremane fell silent, then blinked, shook his head a little, and his eyes cleared of their daze.

"I trust that will help?" he said dryly. He would remember everything he had said, of course; this was not a true trance, more of a state of
intense concentration. And behind him one of his clerks had been taking
down every word and would give Peregryn a copy before he left. If
Peregryn was unable to deal with any of the problems Tremane had
identified for him, there would be a record of what the problem was and
where, and eventually Tremane's own men would move in to take care of
it.

"More than simply 'help' Your Majesty," Peregryn replied shakily.

He would have said more, but one of the men of his group, overcome with
fervor and enthusiasm, leaped to his feet, brandishing his sword over
his head.

"Long life to King Tremane!" he shouted, his voice actually cracking
with excitement. "All gods bless King Tremane!" That goaded everyone
else in the entourage, and eventually Peregryn as well, to get to their
feet in an eruption of cheers.

Tremane remained sitting on his throne-in part, Darkwind knew, because
he couldn't stand just yet-and bent his head to them in gracious
acknowledgment of their accolade. Some of the oldest men were openly
weeping; these were the ones who eventually thrust themselves forward,
flung themselves at Tremane's feet, and kissed his hand with tears
streaming down their faces. It was a moment of extreme and powerful
emotion, and Tremane himself was not unmoved by it. The King took great
care to clasp every man's hand, using both hands, listening to him
babble, until he was ready to rise again and let another take his place. It was quite obvious to Darkwind that Tremane recognized these old warriors for what they were, and knew how difficult it was to get any sort of accolade from them, much less this kind of emotional outburst.

These older men always proved to be those who had survived the purges
and who had expected to die without ever seeing Hardorn return to peace
and prosperity. Darkwind knew very well why they wept, and so did
Tremane. "I have given them back their dreams and their hope," he had
said, a little in awe himself, after the first time this had happened.
"They see a future now, where their grandchildren can expect to grow up
without fear of being murdered on a royal whim." And he was right; that
was precisely what those old men saw: a future, where before had been
only darkness and doubt.

It took some time before the young Baron and his men managed to calm
themselves down, and more before all of the appropriate ceremonies had
been fulfilled. Tremane apologized for having to house them in a
barracks; they hastened to assure him that they would have been
perfectly willing to camp in the snow. Tremane directed his supply
sergeant-who now bore the impressive title of "Procurement Adviser"-to
bestow upon his new liegemen the "usual gifts" and they made a token
protest. The "usual gifts" were all surplus items, so much in surplus
that their value in the town would be seriously depreciated if any more
came on the market. Surplus Imperial clothing, surplus hand tools,
surplus weapons. Some of Tremane's people had argued against that last,
pointing out that he would be arming those who had lately been his
enemies.

But Tremane felt, and Darkwind agreed with him, that giving them weapons demonstrated his trust in them. It was a gesture worthy of a King.

Besides, these new liegemen needed the weaponry that Tremane gave them.
Their own supplies had been depleted in their war against the Imperial
forces. If they were going to rid themselves of their land's boggles,
they needed weapons.

This wasn't at all altruistic. Practically speaking, Tremane would
rather that they went after their boggles instead of turning to Imperial soldiers for help. They knew the lay of their own land, where a boggle might lair, where it could run. His men wouldn't, couldn't. Better to let the local experts handle it, if there was any chance they could.

By the time the presentation was over, Baron Peregryn and his men were,
however, so happy they were beside themselves. They never even noticed that Tremane had gone pale, and was sweating, his hands clenching the arms of his throne so hard that the knuckles were white.

He isn't getting up, because he can't," Elspeth said, her Mindvoice
sharp with alarm. "It's more than simple disorientation this time. It's
really striking him hard." What's wrong?" he asked, hoping she'd know.

"I can't tell, and neither can Gwena." There was frustration there as
well as alarm…All I can tell for certain is that he's in nearly the
same state as he was when his earth-sense was first awakened. This has
something to do with the earthsense itself, and something to do with
this new area he's taken seisin of." Neither of them dared move to help
him, not while the Baron and his people were still present; Tremane was
clearly attempting to conceal his weakness and it was their
responsibility to follow his wishes. He reached for her hand as she
reached for his; their hands closed on each other and they stood
waiting, tensely, while the last of the amenities were played out.

Finally the Baron and all of his men trooped out, to be accommodated
overnight in one of the barracks. In the morning, Tremane would meet
with them again and give them warning and instructions concerning what
everyone here was now calling the "Final Storm," and what to do to
weather it. Then, when everything had been organized for their return,
they would go back home with a small caravan of supply sledges.

Only after the doors closed behind them, could Tremane fold his body
over his knees and his own people rush to help him.

But he waved them away before they could do more than ask him what was
wrong.

"I'll be all right," he said, and Darkwind let out the breath he had
been holding, for he sounded normal, just a bit shaken. "It's nothing physical, and I don't believe it's anything to worry about. Just-something unexpected just happened; let me sit here for a moment or two more while I get over it." He looked over at Darkwind and smiled ruefully. "Quite frankly, it feels as if someone just dropped me off a very high cliff, and I stopped just short of the ground." Elspeth knelt at his side, and Darkwind joined her. "It's the new Barony, isn't it?" she asked. "It's something there. Is it the Storms starting again?"
As if her questions gave him a focus for his own sensations, he seized
on them. "Yes. No. Yes, it's Adair, and no, it's not the Storms. I don't know what it is, but it's not-no wait." His eyes took on that far-off gaze again. "It's the border, the northern border. Adair is on the northern border, and something has happened up there. Something
important. Something that changes everything."

"What-" one of Tremane's generals began, but Tremane just shook his
head, dumbly.

"I don't know," he repeated. "I just know-it's something completely
new."

"What's on the northern border?" someone else asked, and looked at
Elspeth for the answer.

She had one for that question, but she had turned as pale as Tremane.
"Iftel, she said, and her hand clenched tight on Darkwind's. "Iftel. The one place in this part of the world that no one knows anything about."

"So that's the message?" Tremane said, his eyebrows rising.

"Just that? Nothing more?" With his recovery, the meeting among
Darkwind, Elspeth, and Tremane that had been interrupted had been moved
back to the office in his quarters, but by now they had all forgotten
whatever it was they had been talking about, for a message had come by
way of signal-towers from the North. Unfortunately, it only confirmed
that something had happened, and gave them very little other
information.

"That's all there was, sir-Your Majesty-" the aide recovered from his
mistake. "Just that the border with Iftel suddenly opened, and a new
delegation of something friendly was coming down here to meet with you.
I'm afraid," he continued apologetically, "that the signal language is
not very specific."

The signal did say they were friendly, though? You're sure you're not
misreading that?" if Tremane's voice was sharp with anxiety, Darkwind
couldn't blame him.

"No, sir, that much is quite clear," the aide said with certainty." The old man at the signal did say that the term used was one that he hadn't
seen very often, but that it was definitely noted as being friendly."

"Thank the gods for small favors," Tremane muttered, and sighed, running a hand over his chin. "Well, now I know what it-ah-feels like to have the Iftel Border open up. That's useful information. But how whatever is coming expects to travel in this winter weather, I can't begin to imagine."

"Peregryn and his men did," Darkwind pointed out.

"There's no reason to suppose others can't, but it will take time for
them to arrive, perhaps weeks on foot, ten days by horse."

"By then, I might even have a throne I can sit on without worrying if
it's going to break and drop me on my rump," Tremane sighed, then
laughed. "Listen to me complaining about a flimsy throne! As if that was the worst thing we have to face!"

"A delegation from Iftel," Elspeth mused, twisting one of the rings she
wore around and around. "They've always allowed a single envoy from
Valdemar inside their land, so long as it was a member of the Merchant's Guild-but never anyone from the Mercenary's Guild. And they would never permit Heralds inside." She shook her head. "The envoy never would tell us much, only that they "preferred peace" but weren't particularly interested in any exchanges with us."

"Very insular," Darkwind commented, quite well aware that this was a
case of the goose complaining that the swan had a long neck. One can
hardly call the Tayledras anything but insular.

"They could have good reason for being insular," Tremane pointed out.
"When was the first time people of Valdemar encountered them?"

"Quite some time after the Founding," Elspeth admitted.

"Their barrier was already in place then, at least according to the
Chronicles. It was a merchant who was first allowed inside, and it has
mostly been merchants who crossed it since." She smiled deprecatingly.
"They may be insular, but like the rest of us, they enjoy buying
things." Darkwind hid his own smile, for that last shot had been meant
for herself. She had been unable to resist spending some of her own
money on a few odd trifles that had turned up in the loot of the
Imperial storehouse. so they could have encountered someone or something extremely dangerous before they ever saw you," Tremane pointed out, his eyes speculative, as he probably tried to envision what could have been so terrible that it caused an entire country to erect a magical barrier to keep out intruders. That it was a barrier that had survived centuries and baffled the magic powers of Ancar, Falconsbane, and the Empire alike made it all the more intriguing.

"They probably did," Darkwind put in. "In those early days, there were
terrible things that far north. There was at least one Tayledras Vale
somewhere about there, and our chronicles report that at some time while they lived there, they encountered and defeated a Dark Mage much
like Ancar's servant Falconsbane, but with a larger following." He did
not add that this mage probably had actually been Falconsbane in one of
his earlier incarnations. Tremane neither knew about Falconsbane, nor
likely cared; the only person still concerned with Ma'ar-Falconsbane was An'desha, and only because An'desha still held those critically important memories. But as for the rest of them... Falconsbane is dead, with the past, and this time he will stay that way. And about damned time, but we have more important things to worry about. The sober glance that Elspeth cast his way said virtually the same thing. For now, the situation was grave enough that even isolated Iftel was opening her borders and sending representatives to them; there was
no leisure to dwell on the past.

"I don't know what, if anything these representatives of Iftel might
offer you," Darkwind cautioned.

"If nothing else," Tremane mused, "perhaps we can get them to part with
the secret that makes up their Border. It's shielded them from the worst of the Storms so far; it might be able to shield us as well."

"Provided these people arrive here before the question becomes
academic," Gordun, Tremane's chief mage, reminded him dryly. "It's a
long way to the northern border and the going is difficult; by the time
they get here, the Final Storm could have left us in ruins here."

Tremane nodded ruefully. "A good point, though it was an entertaining thought while it lasted. Well, that brings up the next decision; what shall we tell our newest Baron tomorrow about the Final Storm?"

"Hide, and finish your card games quickly?" one wag suggested.

There was a general, strained laugh, and then the discussion moved into
the serious channel of what to do in the immediate future. Eventually,
late that night, precisely what should be told to the Baron and his
entourage had been worked out; enough to make him understand the gravity of the situation, but not so much that he would panic. Panic would be bad for Peregryn and his people as well.

Over the course of the next couple of days, the Baron got his pick of
surplused supplies, was given a review of troopers interested in
resettling up north, and got his briefing and warnings about the Final
Storm. He and his own advisers were philosophical about that last; there was nothing they could do to stop it, and they could only hope that the physical effects were limited to places with no human populations. During the first of the storms, caught both by the initial storm waves and the reflected waves from the Iftel Border, they had suffered more damage than anyone yet reporting in. "We have already had a half-dozen people unfortunate enough to be caught in one of the things we are calling 'change-circles," and they were changed even as beasts are," Peregryn said, with a shrug of deeply-felt helplessness. "The fortunate died."

"And the unfortunate lived," added one of his advisers grimly. "Though
often, that was not long, when they made the mistake of approaching
others for help. It wasn't always their bodies that changed, at least
not outwardly." Tremane exchanged a significant look with Darkwind. This was something he and his people had thought of at about the same time the potential for trouble occurred to the Allies. But while those in Valdemar had been concerned with prediction of where the change-circles would occur, and thus preventing people or large animals from being caught in one, the people in and around Shonar had planned on what to do when a human became a monster. nt is moment, t at a een not more than a possibility.

Now they knew that there were transformed humans somewhere out there in
the north, and it was time to put some of those plans into action in
case the hapless victims trekked south. Tremane wrote something on a
small slip of paper an passed it to a page to take to his clerks. The
orders, already written out, would go into the troops' daily briefing.

In essence, they were simple enough; Humans have been caught in the
Storms and changed. If a boggle shows intelligence and no aggression, be wary-but leave it alone long enough for it to show its intentions.

There had been some debate on the subject, with a minority objecting to
the mere idea of giving a boggle the chance to attack first, and a
second minority wanting to make attempts to communicate with every
boggle that even paused for a moment before attacking. Finally, to end
the debating, Tremane had exercised his royal prerogatives and decreed
the language of the order, which predictably did not entirely satisfy
anyone, not even Tremane himself.

Darkwind had noticed, however, that Tremane had applied enough of the
Imperial manner not to care if anyone was satisfied (including
himself), so long as his decree did the job for which it was intended.

Neither of them could ever have guessed the immediate effect of that
simple order.

Not more than two days after sending Baron Peregryn and his entourage
and gift sledges off, during yet another ceremony of seisin-this time
for the benefit of a very old Squire who had sent his informal pledge
some time earlier, but who had not felt equal to taking the winter
journey until now-they learned exactly why the signal-towers had said
that something was coming down from Iftel.

No one there could have expected just what the somethings were.

Tremane had just added his blood to the soil that old Squire Mariwell
had brought with him, when a great clamor arose up on the walls of the
manor. Darkwind started and looked up automatically, although he
wouldn't be able to see a thing through the stone walls and ceiling.
With great presence of mind, Racky took the casket of earth from
Tremane's hands, mixed the contents quickly, divided them and handed the old man his own casket back, while all about him, his elders were
behaving skittishly, staring and muttering among themselves, hands on
empty scabbards. Before Tremane could send to find out what the cause of all the ruckus was, and right after Racky pressed the casket of soil
back into its owner's shaking hands, one of the King's bodyguards came
bursting into the Great Hall, his face as white as the snow outside.

"Boggles over the castle!" he cried. "Oh, by the gods! Great, huge,
flying boggles! So many they cover the sky! Oh, gods, help us ..."

Elspeth held up her hand to shade her eyes, and squinted up at the dark
shapes hovering in the brilliant blue sky above the courtyard. It was
too soon yet to say just what these "boggles" looked like, other than
the fact that they were winged, but there was something about those
black V shapes and the way that they swooped and soared that looked
tantalizingly familiar.

They remind me of Treyvan and Hydona, but they don't fly exactly the
same way. Could they be gryphons? There've been rumors of gryphons in
the north for years now... "Remember your orders, men," Tremane called
to the nervous sentries on the walls and towers above. "No shooting
without provocation." Pray they don't take simple swooping as
provocation!

"There're exactly twenty-one of them," Darkwind said absently from her
right, as he peered upward into a sky blindingly bright. He bit his lip
and she sensed that he was thinking hard for a moment, then his eyes
narrowed as if he had just made a decision. He extended his gloved hand
to Vree, who transferred his perch from the shoulder to the gauntlet
with that intensity of gaze that told Elspeth he was getting silent
instructions from his bondmate.

A heartbeat later, Darkwind flung Vree upward, and the bondbird pumped
his wings skyward, heading straight for those twenty-one mysterious Vs.
"I'll know in a moment just-" He began, his eyes half closed.

Then, unexpectedly, he laughed, the sound echoing across the otherwise
silent courtyard and making just about everyone in Tremane's escort jump and stare at him as if they suspected he had gone mad. He brushed his snow from his forehead, and pointed up at the "boggles," then at Vree, who had reversed his climb and was making a leisurely descent.

"Tell your men to put their weapons away, King Tremane, Darkwind called, holding out his gloved fist for the returning forestgyre. Vree flared his wings, ruffling Darkwind's hair, and landed as lightly as a bit of thistledown, settling his talons gently around the leather-covered wrist. "I suspect that's your delegation from Iftel up there, and if they can see half as well as my old friends Treyvan and Hydona can, they aren't about to land until there's no chance that they'll wind up becoming feathered pincushions." They are gryphons, then?" Elspeth asked, feeling a strange thrill of excitement. "Could these be more of the "missing Companies" from the days of the Mage Wars?" Could be; even with the distortion of looking through Vree's eyes, these gryphons don't look quite like the ones we've seen. Millennia of separation from the parent stock would do that, I suspect." Darkwind continued to peer upward as the Imperial guards reluctantly put down their weapons at Tremane's shouted orders. "It's either that, or some unbelievably clever Adept managed to duplicate the gryphons we know, and I doubt that's possible." Whatever was or was not possible, it was soon obvious that Darkwind was right about the gryphons' eyesight. As soon as the last spear was grounded and the last arrow put back in its quiver, the hovering specks above descended with a speed that put Vree to shame, and made Elspeth recall what her mother's falconer had once said: "If you want to know what the fastest bird in the world is, ask the falconer who's just had his prize peregrine carried off by a stooping eagle." Not only did the gryphons descend with breathtaking speed, they did so with artistry. They dropped in a modified stoop that followed a tightly spiraling path down into the relatively small courtyard, one after the other in a precise formation, like beads on a string. As the first of them backwinged hard, kicking up a wind that drove debris all over the courtyard and made those who had not been prepared for the amount of air those huge wings could push shield their faces, Elspeth wanted to applaud the theatrical entrance. The huge creature landed on the cobbles of the court as lightly as Vree on Darkwind's glove, touching down with one outstretched hind-claw first, then settling neatly an eyeblink later, posed and poised with wings folded, like a guardian statue in the middle of the expanse of stone.

The next followed a moment after, and the next, until the remaining
twenty were ranged in a deliberate double half-circle behind their
leader, all in the same precise, regal posture.

As Darkwind had indicated, they did not look quite like the gryphons of
k'leshya. These creatures were heavier of beak, neck, and chest; like
eagles, rather than stocky and broadwinged like hawks, or lean,
large-eyed, and long-winged like falcons. In color they were quite
unlike the gryphons of k'leshya, who were as varied in color as the
creatures they had been modeled after. These gryphons were a uniform
dark brown from beak to tail, a color with some patterned shading in a
lighter brown, but nothing nearly like the malar-stripes or masks of the falconiform gryphons, or the variegations of the hawk-gryphons, with their bright yellow beaks and claws.

The effect was very impressive to someone who had never seen any two
gryphons who looked precisely alike; as if someone had deliberately made up a wing of gryphons that matched in every way, like a matched set of horses in a parade group. They looked every bit as intelligent as Treyvan and Hydona, and their yellow eyes watched every move made by the humans before them with calculation and speculation. The heavier beaks made their faces look oddly proportioned, at least at first, but Elspeth found herself swiftly growing used to the new variation.

Each of them wore a harness and pack very similar to the ones the
Kaled'a'in gryphons often wore, made of highly polished leather of a
rich reddish brown, with polished brass fittings.

The apparent leader also wore a neck-collar and chestpiece that looked
as if it had been derived from armor some time in the far distant past.
Now it served only to bear a device of three swords, hilts down, points
up, with a single heraldic sun above the middle. Elspeth glanced at
Darkwind, who shook his head slightly; whatever it signified, he didn't
recognize the symbology.

The gryphons waited, motionless except for the rising and falling of
their chests, watching for someone among the humans to make the first
move. The Imperials and Hardornens, one and all, stared back at them,
faces pale and limbs rooted to the spot. Elspeth thought of her first
sight of gryphons, and couldn't blame them for not moving. Here were
creatures, twenty-one of them, with sickles on their front and hind
claws, and meat hooks twice the size of a man's head in the middle of
their faces-she wouldn't have been eager to rush up and embrace them in
the name of brotherhood either.

"I suppose it's up to us," Darkwind said, a touch of amusement in his
voice. He stepped forward, Elspeth a scant pace behind him, Gwena
following at Elspeth's side, until he stood in comfortable speaking
range of the leader, who regarded him with the unwavering,
scarcely-blinking gaze of the raptor.

"Welcome to Shonar, capital of Leader Tremane of Hardorn, in the name of the Alliance," he said in careful Kaled'a'in.

"I am Darkwind k'sheyna, representative of the Clans of the Tayledras of the Pelagirs, the Shin'a'in of the Dhorisha Plains, and the Kaled'a'in of k'leshya Vale and White Gryphon. This is Elspeth, daughter of Selenay, ruler of Valdemar, and Companion Gwena, representatives of the peoples of Valdemar, Rethwellan, and Karse. Behind me are Leader Tremane, of Hardorn, and his officials and advisers." Elspeth knew only enough Kaled'a'in to follow what Darkwind was saying she could not have hoped to make the same speech herself. Kaled'a'in was handicapped by not having a word for "king;" the closest was "leader" or "ruler," and it gave no sense of the size of what was ruled. Darkwind's three peoples freely borrowed whatever local term applied, but she suspected that he was afraid that the gryphons before him would have no idea what the Hardornen titles meant. The chief gryphon listened attentively and with great concentration, and waited for a moment after Darkwind had finished to see if he would add anything. When Darkwind said nothing more, but made a slight bow, the gryphon opened his beak. He replied in a clear enough voice, but his words were in a form of Kaled'a'in so drastically different from anything she knew that she could only recognize the origin and not what the envoy said. Now it was Darkwind's turn to listen, closely, and with immense concentration, brows knitted into an unconscious frown as he followed the carefully enunciated words.

She did not venture to break his concentration by Mindspeaking to him.

"I don't suppose you're picking up anything from them, are you?" she
asked Gwena, as Darkwind made a reply of which she only understood half
the words, none of them in sequence.

She guessed that he was elaborating on who was what, and to whom the
gryphon needed to apply for reception of his delegation.

"Not a thing, they're shielded, and shielded hard," came the helpful
reply. "It would be useful to have an Empath with us at the moment, but
I don't think there's anything other than a fairly reasonable level of
anxiety in them at this point." In the gryphon's reply, Elspeth caught
the word, "Hardorn," and Darkwind's face cleared. "It would be a great
deal easier if you could speak in the language of Hardorn, sir," he
replied in that tongue. "I fear that time has changed the language you
speak from the one taught to me."

"A grrreat deal of time, young Brrrother-To-Hawksss," the gryphon
rumbled, with evident amusement. "A verrry grrreat deal of time by
anyone's measurrre. I am Tashiketh pral Skylshaen, envoy from the land
you know as Iftel to the court of King Tremane, who we have been told
has been chosen for his office by the land, as it was in the old days."
He waved a huge taloned hand in an expansive gesture at the twenty
gryphons poised behind him. "This is my wing. These are the
representatives of the twenty hrradurr of Iftel, courageous and worthy
of their offices, who each won the right to fly in my wing in the
bahathyrrr." The hrradurr were evidently subdivisions of Iftel-though
what the bahathyrrr could be, Elspeth could not even begin to guess. She made a quick hand-gesture behind her back, hoping Tremane would take the hint and come up to be presented, but he was already moving before she gestured. With quick wits, he had already anticipated what was needed the moment that the gryphon began to speak in Hardornen.

He walked forward with grace that could only be trained into someone who began learning the peculiar "dance" of court movement at a very early age. When he reached Darkwind's side, he bowed his head in a slight acknowledgment to Tashiketh. The gryphon in his turn made a deep
obeisance to the King, then carefully extracted a packet of folded
papers from a pouch at the side of his harness and handed them to
Darkwind who in turn gave them to Tremane.

"The land of Iftel sends greetings to Hardorn's new ruler, oh, Tremane,
once of the House Imperial," the gryphon said, in his strangely accented Hardornen. "We have been sent by the Assembly of Peoples and He Who Made The Barrier to bear the greetings of our Assembly and our Peoples, and to offer you our personal assistance in current and future difficulties.

We are," he added, with a lift of his head, "authorized to assist you in any way." Elspeth could guess at the thoughts running through Tremane's head at the moment, though he gave no sign of them as he gravely thanked Ambassador for his greetings and his offer.

He can't take this offer seriously. Likeliest is either that Tashiketh
is not aware of what he is actually promising, or that this is a polite
custom of Iftel, a standard speech, and the offer is not meant to be
anything more than an expression of polite esteem.

That, of course, was only logical. As welcome as the aid of a full wing
of gryphons would be, how could an ambassadorial delegation be expected
to perform any services that did not directly benefit their own land?
And certainly there was no reason to believe that such a blank card had
been given to King Tremane to fill in as he cared to. He could,
conceivably, ask them to do something too dangerous for his own men to
try. If they were harmed, he would have to face the consequences, but it made no sense to think that Iftel would be willing to put its citizens in danger.

Of course, Darkwind and I and our entourage are perfectly willing to put ourselves in danger-and do-but that's because we aren't really just
envoys, we're representatives Of the Alliance and we're performing as
Hardorn's military allies as well as our other duties. In a sense, we're a very small military unit as well as ambassadors.

The next thing that must be running through Tremane's head as he
surveyed the half-circle of twenty-one very large gryphons, was where on earth was he going to put them?

He couldn't put them in the stable nor in one of the barracks, surely he must see that. The stable simply wasn't suitable, even if her Companion and Darkwind's dyheli Brytha were willing to put up with it, and the earth-sheltered barracks buildings would probably give creatures of the air great screaming fits of claustrophobia. She considered the gryphons, their size, and their probable needs. They would all fit in the Great Hall; could that drafty barn of a room be made habitable as well as elegant? Each of the several towers of the manor would probably hold four or five gryphons in each of the topmost rooms, which were mostly used as armories and weapon storage for the sentries that were posted there; would the gryphons consent to being split up? If they would, there was at least access to the air from the trapdoors in each of the tower roofs. Fortunately, thanks to the spacious barracks now available, and the fact that a large number of staff persons mages, Healers, and other auxiliaries) now were housed in the city rather than in the manor itself, the overcrowding that had been making life so difficult in the early days here had been overcome. There was room in the manor for the gryphons, at least on a temporary basis. But from Tashiketh's speech, this was intended to be a permanent delegation, and they would need permanent housing.

Tremane made a graceful, rambling speech of welcome, probably while he
was trying to think of housing options.

There are still some unused buildings in Shonar. Would the gryphons be
willing to be housed in an "embassy" in the city?

But if they did, what would they use for servants? Gryphons required a
lot of tending; there were any number of things that they couldn't do
for themselves. Lighting fires, for instance; talons were not good at
manipulating firestrikers, and feathers were dismayingly flammable. The
gryphons of k'leshya had specially trained trondiirn to see to their
health and wellbeing; Treyvan and Hydona had done without such help,
officially at least, for several years-but the k'sheyna hertasi had
helped them unofficially. What would these gryphons do? Did they even
guess that the people of Hardorn and the Empire were unready to host
them?

Tremane finally ran out of things to say, and so did Tashiketh.

They stood on the cobblestones and looked politely at one another for a
moment, and it was Tremane who finally broke the silence.

"Now I must confess that I and my people are simply not prepared for
anything other than strictly human ambassadors," he said, in a burst
of that un-Imperial frankness that Tremane confessed ruefully. "I can
only think of three possibilities, and none of them are ideal. There are four tower rooms that might do, if you'd be willing to split up into groups of four or five?" At Tashiketh's headshake, he went on doggedly. "Then there is only the Great Hall, or taking a building in the city itself-"

"But that was what we had intended to do, take a building and make of it our permanent Embassy," Tashiketh interrupted gravely. "We have brought with us the hire of the building, of staff. We knew that your resources are stretched, and had no intention of straining them further. If we could just spend a few days here, somewhere, that would be enough, surely. As soon as we have established our own place, we will remove to it." If Tremane sighed with relief, he was schooled enough not to show it. "We shall be happy to house you in the Great Hall for as long as it takes for you to establish your Embassy," he replied with commendable ease, as out of the corner of her eye, Elspeth saw the young Seneschal breaking away from the rest of the group and pounding at a dead run toward the nearest doorway to put Tremane's intentions into effect. She hid a smile; that was one benefit of having a staff composed entirely of military people. Instead of arguing that something couldn't be done, they ran off and made it happen.

"If you would be so kind, then, I would ask you to send a messenger to
some representative of your city, that we might establish ourselves as
quickly as possible?" Tashiketh asked, and she thought she caught a sly
glint of humor as he added, "'And in the meanwhile, perhaps you have
someone who The Iftel delegation and their reception committee quickly
broke into three groups; one of humans, one of mixed humans and
gryphons, and one of gryphons only. Tashiketh, Darkwind, and an escort
of amused Valdemaran Guards and two solemn and militant gryphons went
off for a brief tour of the grounds as built and fortified by Tremane's
people. The rest of the gryphons stationed themselves in the courtyard
like a group of sober and businesslike young Guard-trainees to wait for
their leader's return. Gwena returned to the stable by herself, as
Elspeth went with Tremane and his people, and volunteered her expertise
as soon as they were out of gryphonic earshot.

Within a relatively short period of time, the Great Hall had been
stripped of the trappings of power and refurbished as temporary housing
for twenty-one gryphons. This turned out to be a great deal easier than
she had thought it would. Remembering what Treyvan and Hydona had done,
Elspeth and the Supply Sergeant went over the lists of surplus and
stores, until they found enough equipment to make the gryphons
reasonably comfortable, then she commanded a squad of sturdy fighters in carrying out every bit of furniture. Stage curtains and painted backdrops were sent for, to help keep the chill of the stone walls at bay, and a rainbow of rugs brought in to soften floors. Every featherbed that could be spared was brought in once the rugs were down
and the draperies up, until there were twenty-one good "nests" covered
with as many thick blankets and throws as a gryphon could want.

Twenty of the nests were arranged along the walls, with the twenty-first up on the dais, and hastily-rigged curtains put up that could partition off that part of the room to make an individual chamber. As privacy, it wasn't much, but at least it was a good gesture in that direction, and if Tashiketh preferred to keep the curtains open, he could.

The largest soup kettles available were brought and filled with fresh
water for drinking, with large, deep soup bowls arranged on a table
beside the kettles in case these gryphons preferred to drink from a
small vessel rather than plunge their prodigious beaks into a larger
one. That took care of drink, and Elspeth advised the cook what kinds of raw meat, fowl, and fish best suited their new guests. The room looked quite odd by the time they were done, but strangely, not at all shabby. There was a curious sort of harmony in the painted canvas scenery backdrops, separated by velvet stage curtains, covering the walls, and between the bewildering variety of rugs, blankets, and throws covering the floor and the nests, the end effect was something like being inside an extremely luxurious tent.

We're ready," she told Darkwind, as the last of the carpenters cleared
their ladders and equipment out, and the first of the kitchen staff
began arriving with whole sides of beef and baskets of fish.

That's good, because I'm running out of things to show them, and I doubt they're going to be able to express even polite interest in warehouses and latrines." Darkwind sounded distinctly amused, and Elspeth had the feeling that Tashiketh was proving to be quite good company.

She cleared out herself, leaving the young Seneschal to do the honors on behalf of Tremane, and decided that she had best report what she had so cavalierly ordered to the King himself.

But someone had already gone to fetch him, for he met her at the door,
with his escort and hers in tow.

He surveyed the transformed room with some surprise and a great deal of
relief. "Bless you, Herald Elspeth," he said with feeling. "I'd have had my carpenters trying to cobble up gigantic cadges or floor perches, or something of the sort-which wouldn't have been a disaster, but it would have delayed things while Tashiketh explained what they really needed. Will this be warm enough, though?" he added, looking at the hangings with a slight frown of uncertainty. "This place is notoriously drafty."

"It will do," she replied. "Their feathers keep them as warm as our
winter cloaks do, and they really only need to stay out of extreme
cold and drafts. The hangings will block the drafts well enough, and
they can wrap themselves in rugs and blankets to sleep. Add charcoal
braziers carefully tended, and they should be fine. They'll need one of
your Healers-a good, brave person, who will find them a challenge and
not something to be afraid of-and about four servants to run errands,
watch the braziers, and fetch things at all times."

"A Healer?" Tremane asked with surprise, signaling to one of his aides.
"Why a Healer? They look healthy enough to me."

"Gryphons have peculiar strengths and weaknesses; the ones I know always try to have a specially trained helper around them to keep them healthy," she explained. "A Healer is the closest we have to that, and I expect that Tashiketh will be willing to explain their needs." She coughed, hiding her expression behind her hand. "The hardest part will be finding a Healer and a handful of servants brave enough to come tend to 'boggles'".

But it was Tremane's turn to smile knowingly. "Not as hard as you might think, Elspeth of Valdemar," he said lightly. "We of the Empire are made of sterner stuff than that." And so it proved; Tremane had not one, but two Healers eager to have access to the gryphons, and there was no problem in getting volunteers from the ranks for the light duty of acting as servants to the Ambassador and his entourage. As soon as Tashiketh and his corps had been installed, pronounced themselves "delighted," and dined, they had their Healer and their servants waiting for orders.

Tashiketh had displayed surprise when he saw the quarters, if an
onlooker knew what to look for; he had shown more surprise and pleasure
at the quality of the hospitality. He dismissed the would-be trondiirn
and three of the four servers as soon as he and the others had eaten,
with thanks and the information that they all needed to rest after their journey. He asked the fourth server to stay, to watch the braziers, and in case any of them required something after they retired, which the man was not at all loath to do. The other three made themselves comfortable in a niche in the hall close by, and got out the inevitable dice.

"Are they going to sleep, really?" Tremane asked Darkwind as the King
and his small entourage left the gryphons to their privacy.

"Probably so," the Hawkbrother replied. "Even given that they flew here
in order to reach us, that was a tremendous distance they covered in a
very short time. Judging by the amount they ate, they're going to sleep
the sleep of the sated until well past sunrise tomorrow." Tremane ran
his hand over the top of his balding head, looking, at the moment,
nothing like a King. "I thought that having earth-sense dropped on me
was confusing," he said, slowly, looking honestly bewildered. "They're
huge and like nothing I've ever been near before. Now what do I do? How
do I treat them?"

"You have dinner with Elspeth and me, and you simply accept them as any
other foreign ambassadors," Darkwind advised. "This is a great honor,
yes. It is also the first time Iftel has sent out representatives who
were not human. This can't be any easier for them than it is for you.
You may not be used to having gryphons as ambassadors, but they aren't
used to being ambassadors in the first place." Tremane looked at him
oddly for a moment, then began to laugh. And if there was a faint edge
of hysteria to his laughter, Elspeth couldn't blame him.

Tremane's men trampled their way purposefully through the snow, hauling
burdens, readying sledges and animals, shouldering packs and weapons.
Darkwind guided Tashiketh and his ever-present gryphon-guards through
the gates and toward the worst of the congestion, stopping often to
allow someone with a more urgent task get past them.

"What is all this excitement concerning?" Tashiketh asked, watching the
activity swirling around them with curiosity brimming over in his large
golden eyes.

"I was about to explain it to you," Darkwind replied, quickly stepping
out of the way of a man burdened with an entire bundle of spear shafts.
"We had a very unexpected and unpleasant message last night."

"Ah! Now I regret vacating our palace quarters so soon!" the gryphon
said brightly. Tashiketh and his own entourage had established
themselves within two days of their arrival in an old inn very near the
manor, cheerfully vacated by the owner at the sight of the odd,
octagonal gold coins offered for its purchase by the treasurer for the
gryphons. They had chosen the inn because of its large rooms on the
second floor, each of which had its own balcony, and several of the
staff were quite willing to stay on and serve such relatively
undemanding masters. Now Tashiketh and his escort of two moved between
the inn and the manor every day, taking part in daily Court and Council
sessions, showing extreme interest in everything Tremane did. So far,
they had neither interfered in the business of Hardorn nor done anything other than tender an opinion when asked for one. It was Darkwind's thought that they were acting in very similar fashion to the way that Treyvan and Hydona had behaved when they first came to k'leshya Vale-willing to offer advice, but making no move to push in where they might not be wanted.

But the cause of this particular uproar had occurred very near midnight, long after the gryphons had retired for the night. The gryphons Darkwind knew did not find it necessary to be purely daylight creatures, but Tashiketh and his group had not been trained from their youth to be explorers and navigators of the unknown, and their experiences here were probably wearing them down. Between the cold and their strange surroundings, they felt much more comfortable taking to their own, warm quarters after dark, and not stirring out until daylight. So when the messenger pounded in on an exhausted horse last night, reporting that one of Tremane's newly-sworn liegemen was under attack by one of his neighbors, the gryphons were blissfully asleep. In the excitement, no one had bothered to wake them or even send them a message, and by the time anyone thought of doing so, it was already daylight and Darkwind was on his way to the gates to escort Tashiketh inside.

There was nothing in the simple attack of one set of humans upon another that would have alerted Tremane through the earth-sense, so the attack came as a complete surprise. A substantial amount of last night had been devoted to planning a defense, and with dawn the men in the chosen barracks were roused, briefed, and moving by the time Tashiketh appeared at the gates.

Darkwind, who met the gryphons here every morning, explained the
situation to him. Tashiketh stopped, just out of the way of traffic, and stared at him in perplexity.

"But it will be very difficult to fight in this season, will it not?" he asked, very slowly. "And with the possibility of the mage-storms
resuming soon, that could make it more difficult yet.

Darkwind nodded. "How could it not be?" he replied. "But if King Tremane does not come to the aid of this liegeman, then every other bandit who thinks to make himself King in place of Tremane will think himself free to do what he wills."

"But why did Tremane not call upon us?" Tashiketh asked, with a
surprised and even injured expression. "Did we not offer to be of all
assistance to him? And would his enemies not find the sight of a gryphon wing descending upon them enough to terrify them into submission? Why, look you how frightened his own people were when they knew that we were coming-how much more so must his enemies be?" Now it was Darkwind's turn to stop in his tracks and stare at Tashiketh with shock and incredulity. "But you are ambassadors!

We are allies," Tashiketh replied firmly. "Even as you, Brother-to-Hawks. I am not only the Ambassador, I am the leader of this force, which members have drilled and trained together. Is it not preferable to quell disturbance with the application of a small force, rather than to wait and meet war with a greater one?" He clicked his beak and then gryphgrinned, in the way that Darkwind was so familiar with from Treyvan. "Besides, we are bored. It will be good to show our fighting prowess. It is what we are born, bred, and trained for."

"I thought that there was no fighting in Iftel," Darkwind blurted, as
activity swirled all around them. "I thought that your Border prevented
any such thing!" Now Tashiketh sobered. "Simply because we do not make
war on other nations, nor permit those nations to make war upon us, that does not mean that we do not prepare ourselves for war or for the day when the Barrier might fail us. I cannot tell you how long we have
trained." He shook his head. "In my life, all the life of my father, and his, and his, and so far back I cannot begin to count the years. We have always trained and contested, and will always train and contest. And when the need is there, we fight." Then he roused up his feathers, and moved so quickly that Darkwind was left behind completely unprepared. "Come!" he shouted. "We go to this King, and we tell him in a way that will make him believe!"

As Darkwind knew, even when on the ground, gryphons could move very
quickly when they chose. He was left behind as Tashiketh and his escort
charged into the manor, bent on offering themselves as potential victims on Tremane's altar.

And he was afraid, terribly afraid, that Tremane would accept them.

But when he reached the council chamber, he found that although Tremane
had accepted their offer, it was with conditions and reservations.

"Tell the men to stand down," he was ordering as Darkwind entered. "I'll try Tashiketh's way, but-but-" he said turning to the exultant gryphon and raising his voice. "You, sir, will obey the orders of your
commander, that is, me, and you will make the preparations that I tell
you to and adhere to the conditions that I set." Darkwind could hardly
believe the transformation that a few moments had made in the dignified
gryphon. Tashiketh and his two escorts were wildly excited, hackles and
eartufts up, eyes flashing as their pupils expanded and contracted
rapidly, their talons flexing against the wooden floor and leaving
gouges that would be the despair of Tremane's housekeepers.

These were no longer the strange ambassadors of an even stranger
culture, these were warriors, and he wondered how they had kept their
nature hidden beneath those serene exteriors.

"We have the time, if you and your wing are determined to fly a warning
against these people, to take the precaution that is needed to prepare
you," Tremane said sternly, every inch the commander. And now Darkwind
wondered at the transformation in the King as well. Here and now, there
was no uncertainty, no hesitation. This was the Imperial Commander, a
man who knew both planned warfare and scrimmage fighting, the man who
had been entrusted with the conquest of Hardorn. "There is time enough
for you to see what maps we have of the area and speak with those of
Shonar who have relatives in the contested area. I would have you see my armorer, so that he can make you breast- and side-plates to protect you from arrows, and helmets to defend you from slung shot, if there were time enough." Tashiketh opened his beak to protest, and Tremane swiftly overruled him. "Not a word, sir! I am your commander, I have been fighting these people, as you have not, I know what they can and cannot do, and I will decree the terms under which you will fight. I will not dictate your tactics, sir, for that is your purview, but I can and will decree what I need for your safety!" He looked so black and angry that Darkwind thought for a moment that Tashiketh would take offense. But one of the two escorting gryphons muttered something under his breath, and Tashiketh burst into laughter.

"What did he say?" Tremane asked, his anger fading.

"He said, "What a surprise, to find after all these centuries, a
commander who is more concerned with saving our blood than spending it! And he is right." Tashiketh bent his head in submission to Tremane's
will. "We will follow the wishes of the commander who does not waste
anything. I'll send Shyrestral to bring the rest, and we will see your
maps and plans rather than improvising solely upon what we find there."
In so short a time that Darkwind was astonished, the gryphons were lined up in three ranks for a none-too-hasty briefing.

Only one somewhat bewildered man, who had only visited the place once,
could be found to tell the gryphons about the lay of the land in that
area. He found himself overwhelmed by the gryphons' relentless
questioning over details of the region' s wind currents.

On the fourth day after the messenger had arrived, the gryphon wing flew off to confront the enemy, and Darkwind and everyone else watched them fly off with mingled hope and dread. The gryphons seemed full of
confidence and good humor; they might have been going off on a pleasure
jaunt.

Except that their behavior showed Darkwind very clearly that their
hunting and killing instincts were roused. When they were not moving,
they were intensely alert, heads up, eyes taking in everything, bodies
poised. When they moved, it was with bewildering swiftness and utter
sureness, as deadly and beautiful as the dance of warrior and sword.
They took no notice of the snow beneath their claws, of the cold breeze; their eyes were on the blinding blue sky, and they could not wait to be up and out. When they took to the air, they leaped up, catching the shivering wind in their talons and conquering it.

"You're sure they will have a chance?" Tremane asked, as the wing
vanished into the blue distance. "I keep feeling as if I'm sending them
to their doom."

"Gryphons were originally created as fighters," Darkwind replied slowly. "Very versatile ones. It's in their blood, and a millennium or two isn't going to change that."

"They may have been created as fighters, but are they trained?" Tremane
said, his voice sounding strained. "I know what my men can do-but these
creatures? Granted, their opponents aren't as well-equipped or skilled
as my men, yet it only takes a single well-aimed arrow to kill someone.
And you tell me that Iftel has kept war away from her borders for as
long as the Valdemarans have known them. How can they be ready for this? Surely-"

"Forgive me for interrupting you, but has Tashiketh told you how his
twenty wingmen were chosen?" Darkwind replied, before Tremane could
voice much more in the way of anxiety.

The King shook his head.

"I thought not. Let's go inside where it's warm," Darkwind told him, as
the sharp wind cut through the seams of his coat and chilled him. He
shivered involuntarily and stamped his numbing feet to warm them. "I
believe I'm about to surprise you." The group retired to Tremane's
study; several of his other staff members, who had overheard the
exchange, had managed to tag along. The gryphons had excited a great
deal of interest among the Imperials and Hardornens alike, and Darkwind
didn't at all mind assuaging some of their curiosity. It was a close fit for all of them, but Tremane gave no hint that he wanted any of them to leave.

"I've managed to learn a bit about the way things are done in Iftel, at
least as far as the gryphons are concerned," Darkwind told the group,
once they were all settled in a circle of chairs, Tremane's only a
little larger and more elaborate than the rest. "It's not the peaceful
paradise you and I might have imagined."

"Oh?" Elspeth said. "But they won't even let the Mercenary's Guild establish a Guildhall there!"

Darkwind could only shake his head. "I don't know of their origin, but because of what I have learned from Tayledras history and some Kaled'a'in information, I have a few guesses. "Tashiketh either doesn't know the answers, or has been ordered to pretend that he doesn't, so this is speculation."

Tremane uttered a scornful little cough. "Darkwind, at times your insistence on hedging is maddening. Tell us! Don't keep saying it's only your opinion."

Darkwind chuckled, not at all offended. "Certainly. I think that the citizens of Iftel are descended from some of the forces that were cut off when the Mage of Silence's stronghold was overrun. There were gryphon-wings with several of the armies, and since female gryphons by and large are a bit larger and heavier than the males, females always fought alongside males, often their mates, so there would have been a breeding population."

"You mean some of these gryphons are female?" one of the generals
blurted, looking completely taken aback.

Darkwind laughed. "You didn't even look between their haunches, eh? Yes, some are female. Probably half; males also spend as much time tending the young as females, since they feed their young the way young hawks are fed." He raised an eyebrow at the general's stunned expression. "Oh, come now-you didn't think anything with a beak like that could suckle milk, did you? I wouldn't want to see the result if one tried!" The general winced, and Tremane himself made an expression of sympathetic pain.

"As for the concept of females being poor fighters, I would not venture
that opinion around Herald Captain Kerowyn of the Skybolts if I were
you," Elspeth added crisply. "She is likely to invite you to have a
practice session with a few of her ladies-or worse, with her!" Darkwind
watched the general in question as he took a second and third glance at
Elspeth, finally saw the calluses and muscles, and realized that Elspeth was not the pampered princess he had thought. "So much for physiology; I am assuming that they must have come from Urtho's people, because gryphons are created creatures, and I can't imagine where else they could have originated. We know from Kaled'a'in stories that some of Urtho's people were cut off from their own forces-they knew what was
going to happen when the enemy overran the last stronghold," Darkwind
continued. "I guess that they threw up hasty Gates-Portals, to you-and
just tried to get as far away as possible. They succeeded, and ended up
in fairly hostile country and then the Cataclysm happened and the Storms began. At some point, something put up the Barrier; Tashiketh isn't being very forthcoming about that either. The problem with putting a wall around you, though, is that it walls you in as well as other people out. So, in order to keep from killing each other or losing such self-defensive abilities altogether, the Peoples of Iftel organized their aggressions."

Tremane looked troubled. "Organized? How?" Darkwind sighed, for he was
of two minds about what he had learned. He understood why, and
sympathized, but he wasn't happy about what they had chosen to do.
"Games, but games that verge on being blood-sport. If Tashiketh is
telling the truth, no one has to participate, but in the highest and
most competitive levels, there is real possibility of serious injury and even death. Serious wargames; Tashiketh says that in his part of Iftel there are several deaths among participants in every round of
competition. That was how his wing was formed; every single one of these gryphons is the winner of contests in his district that pitted him against opponents of his own and other races, coming at him singly and in a group, and using weapons that were merely blunted, not rendered harmless."

Tremane blinked. "Oh, he said, thoughtfully. "Interesting. They aren't as inexperienced as I assumed."

"That isn't all, of course," Darkwind went on. "Each preliminary winner
was required to participate in intellectual contests as well; what those were, I don't know for certain, but they probably included memory tests and logic puzzles.

Tashiketh was the overall winner of everything. And the reason that the
delegation is made up entirely of gryphons is that only gryphons would
have been able to get here before the Storms started again. Now you know the gist of everything that I have learned or guessed." Tremane and the others seemed somewhat taken aback by the fact that the right to be an ambassador had been determined by a series of often-deathly-violent contests, but Darkwind privately thought that was a more logical means of choosing someone for an important post than some other methods he had heard of from supposedly "civilized" lands.

Picking someone to whom you owed a favor, or someone whose family was
important, or worst of all, giving the job to whoever paid the most for
the honor-all those were recipes for sheer disaster, and whoever used
such means probably got the disasters he deserved. Granted, most
ambassadors didn't have to compete in highly dangerous war games, but
then, most ambassadors weren't also authorized to participate in their
allies' real conflicts, either. He just wished that the contests weren't so lethal.

"Are you confident in their ability as a fighting unit?" Tremane asked
him bluntly. Darkwind nodded.

"I know my gryphons, and I know that these are welltrained," he replied. "I also know they aren't stupid. I don't think they would have been nearly so eager to volunteer if they thought your opponents had working magic."

"Ah!" Tremane exclaimed, and chuckled. "I see. They don't expect to come within range of a normal distance-weapon, is that it?"

"Probably not; they can stay out of range of arrows and drop large,
heavy objects down on the enemy." Another of the generals started to
chuckle, as if he found the idea vastly amusing." Or spears, or
firepots-"

"Or any number of things that are inconvenient when crashing through
one's roof," Elspeth interrupted, before the good gentleman could wax
eloquent. "But telling you that they were going to do that would not
have sounded nearly as heroic as they wanted to appear."

"So, we will let them believe that we are still cherishing the illusion
that they flew off to battle talon-to-sword with our foes," Tremane said firmly. "If they choose to tell us what their tactics are, we will then praise their cleverness. Otherwise, we will be effusive in our praises of their bravery. In either case, they will succeed in making it clear to troublemakers that we have a formidable ally that they do not; they will accomplish what they set out to do, which is to win this single scrimmage, and that may be all we need. I would rather have a bloodless victory than any other kind."

"I've taken the liberty of ordering a congratulatory feast of wild game, sir," the Seneschal said diffidently. "I was afraid that if we left it too long, we would never get the meat thawed in time." Tremane nodded his agreement absently, which relieved the poor lad, who was still afraid to order anything on his own that might have a serious impact later. In this case, ordering a feast might lead to a shortage later. Darkwind privately doubted that, having seen the stores of frozen meat himself, but it was a possibility. Perhaps more than a possibility, when he recalled the sheer mass of food that Treyvan and Hydona could put away without hesitation. But now that Tremane had given his approval, the young Seneschal clearly felt much easier in his mind.

I do miss Treyvan and Hydona, and their two little feathered fighters. I miss tumbling and playing with the little ones, and feeling Hydona preen my hair, and watching Vree dive after Treyvan's crest-feathers. And I miss their deep voices, their affection, and advice.

"'Now, gentlemen and ladies," Tremane said, his tone turning somber,
"Let us consider what we must do if our allies fail."

"It isn't likely, I don't think," Darkwind offered. "A single gryphon, half-asleep, can defeat a squad of fighters with less effort than it takes to preen. This is a group of twenty-and-one, fully awake and eager!" Several of the attendees laughed, looking quite convinced of that by what they had seen of the creatures. "But you're correct, of course. Preparations should be made for less than total victory." The rest of the day was spent making plans for just that contingency, but as sunset reddened the skies to the west, the victors came winging home, quite intact, and with the foes' leader's personal banner, a letter of surrender, and a pledge that he would come in person to swear his allegiance, all clutched proudly in Tashiketh's talons.

The cheers that rose to greet them as they replicated their previous
graceful landing in the courtyard were prompted as much by relief as by
joy in the victory, but they didn't need to know that.

Darkwind assured one and all that a tired gryphon was a starving
gryphon, and Tashiketh's second in command nodded firmly. At the feast,
to which the tired gryphons were immediately ushered, Tashiketh formally presented the surrender and pledge, and then modestly revealed the secret of their victory.

"First we dropped rocks through their roofs, he said, with a faintly
cruel chuckle. "Then we dropped one firepot on a thatched outbuilding,
and circled in three subwings of seven each. After six passes, we
threatened to drop more. That got their attention long enough for us to
claim that we were a mere fraction of the winged army that King Tremane
could command if he chose. And I hinted that we weren't too particular
about waiting for provisions to arrive in a case like that, and were
inclined to help ourselves. The idea of hundreds of us descending out of the sky, smashing big holes in every roof, setting fire to things, and snatching and carrying off who-knew what to eat, had them in a panic. If that idiot leading them hadn't surrendered on the spot, I think they might killed him and served him to us on a platter with a good broth on the side!" Several of the generals laughed heartily at this, and even Tremane smiled. Darkwind thought it best to interject a cautionary note.

"It won't do to make them think you're going to carry off children for
snacks," he warned Tashiketh under cover of the laughter. "How could
they trust a King who'd let his 'monsters' feed on children?"

"No fear of that," Tashiketh soothed. "I made sure we were eying the
sheep when I said that, and added a bit about how tasty fresh, fat
mutton was, and allowed as how we could decimate their every flock and
herd in a matter of days and just feel stronger for being so well fed.
For a people on the edge of starvation, accepting surrender in place of
that sounds very appealing. Our rules of combat have always stressed
that we're not to intimate that we eat thinking beings. We might not
have done this in earnest before, but we've had plenty of training."

"Good." Darkwind relaxed enough to chuckle. "I wish I'd seen their faces when you told them that you were only the vanguard. And of course, they would never know when you were bluffing."

"It wasn't all bluff." Tashiketh said smugly, then suddenly took an
extreme interest in his food, as if he realized that he had said too
much.

Well. Well! Darkwind took an interest in his own meal, as if unaware
that Tashiketh had let fall something important.

So Iftel has more interest in Tremane's welfare than I thought. Enough
that they would back him with a significant force? It certainly sounds
that way.

If they would send an army to help him, what else would they be willing
to offer? The secret of the Barrier? Other secrets? And how much of that would be of any use against the coming Storms, especially the Final Storm? Or would so little be left after that last blow that none of this would matter?

"You could not possibly have conceived of anything more likely to have
turned you into the Army's favorites," Elspeth told Tashiketh, as a roar went up from the watching crowd.

Five of Tashiketh's subordinates climbed, crawled, flew, leaped, and
contorted themselves across a torturous obstacle course under the bright noontime sun. It was cold enough to numb feet encased in boots and several layers of stockings, but that hadn't prevented the now-usual crowd from showing up as soon as the contest began. Typically, the former Imperial soldiers had gathered to watch, cheer-and then bet on the outcome. This was probably the most exciting entertainment in the entire country about now.

There was not a great deal in the way of entertainment in Shonar, in
spite of the presence of the King here; every time the one and only Bard in the town composed a new song, the tavern where he played was crowded to capacity for days, and the soldiers did their best to enliven otherwise dull days and nights with mixed results. One of the
highest-priced items to be had among the soldiery was a deck of cards.
But now there was a new and novel source of spectacle in their midst,
one with all the finest attributes of a fair, a race, and a real
contest.

Since Tashiketh never participated except to practice alone, the outcome of any given competition was always subject to the whims of chance, which made it perfect for wagering.

That in turn made it more attractive yet, if that was possible.

"Would it harm me in your esteem if I confessed that this was a
deliberate choice, making our contests public affairs?" Tashiketh asked
Elspeth, gravely.

"Hardly. I would simply congratulate you on your intelligence," she
replied promptly. "The only question I have is why stage these obstacle
things at all? There are other ways of keeping you all in fighting
trim."

"Because we must. Our hierarchy changes as the results of the
contests change, and as our own ranking changes, so will the rankings of our various counties. And that, at year's end, will decree where
discretionary tax funds are spent." just as he made that surprising
assertion, Tremane joined them, relatively anonymous in a plain brown
soldier's cloak with the hood pulled up against the bite of the cold
wind. Tashiketh did not turn his head or appear to notice, but a few
moments later, he addressed the King directly.

"So, King of Hardorn, I am given to understand that you are exceedingly
curious about my people. I finally have leave to answer your questions,
for you have proven yourself to be an honorable ally and worthy to hear
the full tale of our land." Now Tashiketh moved his head to gaze into
Tremane's astonished face with mild eyes. "Ask," he said. "The time for
secrets is past." Whatever Tremane's faults, an inability to think
quickly was not one of them. "Darkwind k'sheyna believes that your
people were descended from one part of the armies of the mage his people served, specifically the one called Urtho," he said. "Are you?"
Tashiketh laughed, a deep rumble that came from somewhere down in the
bottom of his chest, and he roused his fathers with a shake. "Yes. The
shortest version of the tale is this. Our several Peoples were all
serving the Third Army.

Urtho made it his policy to group all the folk of a particular land into one Army, rather than dividing all of them amongst his Armies. However, the humans of the Third, serving a God who decreed that those who had magic power should be His priests, had no mages of their own. They had no prejudice against working with those of other faiths, and so had a group of mages assigned to them, mages who had nothing whatsoever in common with them, not even nationality. Also attached to the Third were a wing of gryphons with their trondi'irn, a pack of kyree, a surge of ratha, a knot of tyrill, and a charge of dyheli." What am I hearing Tyrill? Ratha? How did they get into this story?

"And these are your Peoples of Iftel?" Tremane asked.

"What is a ratha" Darkwind asked, at the same moment.

Tashiketh wasn't the least perturbed by being bombarded with questions.
"These are our Peoples, yes. Ratha are from the far north, and are to
the mountain cats what kyree are to wolves. Tyrill I think you know
already, Brother-To-Hawks."

"Only by legend," Darkwind replied, feeling a bit dazed.

"They were one of Urtho's last creations. A larger race of hertasi, and
there weren't many of them."

"But, oh, they breed with such enthusiasm!" Tashiketh laughed, tossing
his head so that the freshening wind ruffled his feathers. Behind him,
another cheer rose (together with some groans) as one of the other
gryphons did something clever. "They learned it from us gryphons. There
are plenty of them now! Well, to make this as brief as possible, the
Third, whose emblem I wear, was cut off from Ka'venusho at the time of
retreat. They chose to Gate to the remotest place the mages could think
of, hoping they would be beyond the reach of Ma'ar and the destruction
that would ensue when Urtho's Tower was destroyed by its master. But
there was a problem."

"Not enough power," Tremane guessed shrewdly.

"Nowhere safe to go?" asked Elspeth.

"No Adepts," hazarded Darkwind.

"A little of all three. the Ambassador explained. "Their Priests-the
humans-had remained behind in their own land to protect their people.
The only Adept with them strong enough to raise a far-away Gate was
someone who, at the time, was thought to be a barbarian shaman from the
far north. They had to go to the remotest place he knew of-his home, not the gryphons' home, nor that of their human charges, not anywhere near it. There wasn't much choice; they took the escape that was offered, ending in the north of what is now Iftel. They thought to wait out the destruction, then be reunited with the others. But no sooner had they all gotten across, then something terrible happened, worse by far than anything they had expected.

"The Cataclysm," Darkwind said aloud. "The Tower and Ma'ar's stronghold
destroyed, and the interaction of the double release of terrible
forces."

"And needless to say, they did not know the cause for many years. They
only knew that things were impossible, that there would be no way to
find their friends and fellows, that there would be no way for the
humans of the Third to find their way home. And almost as bad, it soon
became obvious that they had not gone far enough; they ran into a fresh
Army of Ma'ar's." Tashiketh shook his head. "It must have seemed as if
they had come to the end of the world, that everything evil had won
against them, and was about to annihilate them. Battered by the
mage-storms that followed, on the verge of attack by superior forces,
and unable because of the high number of wounded to travel to someplace
where they might escape the worst of the effects, they did the only
thing they had left to do. The humans prayed to their god, Vykaendys-"
That name struck Darkwind like a blow to the head.

"Who?" Darkwind blurted, as Elspeth's eyes widened.

"Vykaendys," the Ambassador repeated. "The Holy Sun, from whom all
life-" Elspeth interrupted. "Ambassador Tashiketh, do the humans of your land use a different language from the gryphons?" The huge gryphon
nodded. "The sacred language is different," he replied. "The shared
language is a combination of several tongues, and Old Gryphon is very
like that tongue you spoke to me when first we met. Do I take it you
wish to hear something of the Sacred Tongue of Vykaendys?

"Please," said Elspeth and Darkwind together.

Tashiketh rattled off a few sentences, and Darkwind looked to Elspeth,
who had a better command of languages than he did.

She listened very closely, as her eyes widened further until the whites
showed all around. "I'm not a linguist," she said when he has finished,
"But I would say that this is to Karsite what the Iftel gryphon tongue
is to Kaled'a'in." Darkwind whistled. "No wonder Altra kept insisting
that the Border would only recognize himself, Karal, Ulrich, or Solaris! The God of Iftel and the God of Karse are one and the same! Isn't that going to put a Firecat among the pigeons!" 

Gwena chose that moment to add her own observation. "Oh, this is interesting indeed. Solaris doesn't know this, but Altra does. I wonder why and why he hadn't told her?"

"They prayed for protection, right?" Elspeth asked the Ambassador." And
the god established the Border to keep their enemies out?"

"Precisely," Tashiketh agreed. "And of course Vykaendys did exactly
that, answering their prayers. He is the one who ordained that we send
our representatives beyond the Border to help as we could with the
current crisis. He sent us to Hardorn once He knew that Hardorn again
had a King who had been bound to the land. Otherwise, given the gravity
of the current situation, we would, of course, have been sent into
Valdemar. All creatures must work together to survive the last Storms,
but Vykaendys is pleased to welcome the land that lies between the two
that He governs, as a brother-country rather than an enemy-state."

Elspeth shook her head. "Of course," she replied. I can't help wondering what Solaris is going to make of this when she finds out about it," Elspeth added to Darkwind. "Although, in retrospect, it's fascinating, the ways in which gods answered the prayers of their followers-the Star-Eyed creating the Dhorisha Plains for the Shin'a'in who had renounced magic, and granting the Tayledras the power to protect themselves with their magic while they healed the land a bit at a time. And now the Sun Lord, creating a barrier around Iftel-" 

Darkwind wondered if He had done something similar for Karse just to hold through the Cataclysm itself. The Karsites were certainly close enough to the source of the Cataclysm to have needed such protection. But wait; the Sun-priests are mages. Maybe the Sun-priests are their equivalents of the Tayledras, and Vkandis gave them access to great power to protect themselves the way the Tayledras did. The greatest dangers after the Cataclysm lay in the monsters that had been created. Could that be where and why the Sun-priests got the ability to summon and control demons so effectively? Now that was an intriguing thought!

There was no way of knowing without having Karal to ask, and even then
it might not be canonical information. But Altra was obviously privy to
noncanonical truths, and if he was inclined to share them with
nonbelievers if he is, we might learn more than we ever wanted to know.

But Elspeth had been thinking further ahead than he. As Tremane asked
more detailed questions of Tashiketh, she drew Darkwind and Gwena into a close mind-link.

"What are the odds that we can involve gods in all of this?" she wanted
to know. "Vkandis, Kal'enel, either or both. The power of a god might
save us."

"Or it might cause a whole lot more trouble than any mage storm, however powerful," Darkwind warned. "We can't know." But I can ask Florian to ask Altra," Gwena said. And perhaps he can ask An'desha as well." Darkwind shook his head doubtfully. "Don't count on any real help," he told them. "The Star-Eyed is disinclined to interfere, Vkandis may be fundamentally the same. They may be able to help us only after the disaster strikes, and be unable to do anything to prevent it from coming-because we have that power, if only we make the correct choices, and They will not take that right to choose from us."

Gwena nodded mentally, but Elspeth's mind-voice seethed with frustration. "But how can we make the right choices if we don't know what they are?" she fumed.

"If we knew what to do, then they wouldn't be choices, they would be
plans," Darkwind chided gently.

He didn't blame her, and he didn't have the heart to tell her that the
"right" choice, from the point of view of a god, might not be the one
that prevented a second Cataclysm. Gods tended to take a much longer
view of things than mere mortals, and what they considered to be good in the long run might be pretty horrible for those who had to live through it.

I'm sure that Baron Valdemar's people heartily wished him to the bottom
of the Salten Sea during that first winter in the wilderness, he thought soberly- And certainly it was terrible for the last Herald-Mages of Vanyel's time to be the last of their kind. But in the long run, those were good things for most of the people of Valdemar.

This was probably not the time to point this out to her, however.

All we can do is what we've always done," he told her with utmost
sincerity. "We must do our best. Then, even if things turn out badly, we will know it was not from any lack of trying on our part." She sighed.

"I do wish you weren't right so often," she said forlornly. "I rather
enjoyed being able to rail against Fate and the Unfairness Of It All."
But she pulled herself a bit straighter and nodded." Whatever happens,
we'll survive it, and we'll build on what's left." She glanced around,
and her mouth twisted wryly...All our peoples do seem to be rather good
at that."

He squeezed her hand in agreement. And we will do it together, ashke." He could not help thinking about the group at center of Dhorisha, picking through the remains of the Tower, without experiencing a feeling of chill. Whatever happened-yes, he, Elspeth, and the others
here would probably survive it.

But what of his friends in the Tower? Would they?

As he turned his attention back to the conversation at hand, his stomach gave a sudden lurch, his eyes unfocused for a moment, and he felt very much as if the ground had dropped out from underneath him. Then the world steadied again, but as he looked from Tremane to Elspeth and back, and saw the same startled look in both their eyes turn to sick recognition, he knew what had just hit him.

The mage-storms had begun again. Hints of their building power were
beginning to overcome the Counter-Storm. They were not strong enough yet to cause any problems, but it was only a matter of time.

Darkwind understood.

This was the first sign of the coming Final Storm, and their respite
before it struck would be measured in, at best, weeks.

Their survival was in doubt, and even if they did survive, whether they
would prosper afterward was in deep question.

There were hundreds of variables, and just as many major decisions.

There were key uses of power and defense, solving of mysteries and
understanding of connections. Like each segment in a spiderweb, the
failure of any of those elements could collapse it all, and cost every
one involved-everything.

"What is wrong with your friend Firesong?" Lyam asked Karal in a whisper, as Firesong went off to a remote corner of the Tower to brood-or as he called it, "meditate"-for the second time that day. "The others are all working together over the notes for the cube-maze, but he keeps going off by himself, he says to think. Is that usual for him? Is he ill, do you think? Or have the frustrations begun to weigh upon his soul?" 

"I'm not sure," Karal replied, although this behavior of Firesong's
wasn't particularly news to him. Living together as closely as they all
were, it, wasn't possible for any of them to deviate from normal
behavior without the others noticing.

And Firesong was certainly acting oddly-though not with that selfish
oddness that made him so dangerous before.

There were several signs that this bout of solitary brooding was far
different than the last. For one thing, Aya kept cuddling close to him,
tucking his head up under Firesong's chin while Firesong held him and
scratched gently under his wings, and it had been Aya's avoidance of his bondmate that had been one sign that his temper and thoughts were
tending in dangerous directions. He wasn't tinkering with odd magics
either; he was sitting in out-of-the-way corners, staring into space, as if Firesong sought the privacy in his mind that he could not get in the Tower. But those bursts of "meditation" always seemed to end in a sharp and thoughtful glance at Karal, and given some of the past difficulties between them, that didn't make Karal feel entirely easy about his possible thoughts.

"Huh," Lyam said, and scratched the top of his head with a stubby,
ink-stained talon. "Well, he doesn't seem to be getting much done, an
he's giving me collywobbles with the way he just sits and stares. If
he's gotten into a blue funk, maybe one of you ought to shake him out of it."

Karal made a face. "I'm not sure any of us want to shake Firesong out of anything, but I suppose it can't hurt if I talk to him. If there's a problem, maybe Silverfox could help him with it or something. Or maybe it's a problem he doesn't want to get Silverfox involved with, and maybe I could help him." He made a face. "After all, I'm supposed to be a priest, and that's the sort of thing that priests are supposed to do, right?" Having said that, he knew he had talked himself into the
position where he was going to have to do something about the situation.
 
Lyam nodded encouragingly to him at that last statement, so before he
could find a reason to put it off, he got to his feet and trailed off
after Firesong.

Altra invited himself along, sauntering casually at Karal's heels. As
Karal glanced inquisitively down at him, Altra blinked guileless blue
eyes at him. "I thought I'd come along, too, just in case you needed
me," the Firecat said idly. Karal did not ask "for what?" since he knew
the answer already.

There wasn't a great deal that Altra couldn't shield him against, if
Firesong turned angry or dangerous, or both.

He found the Adept in the chamber containing one of the mysterious
contrivances (one made of wire, odd plates of some sparkling material,
and gemstones) that looked far too delicate to warrant the label of
"weapon." Aya was with him, cuddling inside his jacket. Aya's long tail
trailed comically down from beneath the hem, as if the cascade of
feathers belonged to Firesong. The Adept stared at the softly glowing
stones with an intense look on his face. He turned to face the entrance
when he heard Karal's deliberate footstep, but he did not seem particularly surprised to see the Karsite.

Karal approached him gingerly, but there was nothing in Firesong's
slight smile to indicate anything other than welcome.

As he edged around the wire-sculpture weapon, Karal tried to think of a
lateral approach to the subject, and failed to come up with a good one.
So he decided to go straight to the heart of the matter, and make no
attempt at being clever.

"You've been wandering off by yourself for the last couple of days, and
we're a little concerned about you," he said bluntly. "It didn't seem
right to go behind your back and pester Silverfox to see if you were all right, so I decided to ask you directly. Is there anything wrong?"

"Other than everything?" Firesong asked archly. "We are in a very
precarious position here, you know."

"Well, yes, but-" Karal fumbled. "I mean-"

"There's nothing wrong, or rather, nothing wrong with me, Karal,"
Firesong interrupted, with a smile for his bondbird, as Aya stuck his
head out of the front of the Adept's jacket, saw who it was that
Firesong was talking to, and tucked himself back inside. "But I'm glad
you came to find out, because I have a few questions that really concern only you. Here, sit." He patted the floor beside him, and Karal lowered himself down warily. "Karal, Karse and Valdemar fought a generations long war, and I can understand that anyone from Karse might feel very negative about certain figures of Valdemaran history, but you are bright enough to reason things through for yourself and not just take everything you are told in without ever examining it. So, given that, here's a history question; what do you know and what do you think about Heraldmage Vanyel Ashkevron?" Karal stared at him, a bit confused by the abrupt change of subject, for the initial question Karal had asked about Firesong had nothing whatsoever to do with a figure of ancient history like Vanyel Ashkevron.

But it was a very interesting question, given all of the changes Karal's own life and thoughts had been going through. It might, on the surface, seem like the question had no relevance in any way to the situation in the Tower, but he knew Firesong better than that, and Firesong had to have an ultimate purpose in asking it. 

"I'm going to have to think aloud, so bear with me," Karal said,
finally. "As you probably guessed, according to our history Vanyel
Demonrider was absolutely the epitome of everything that was terrible
about Valdemar. Every child in Karse used to be told that if he was bad, Vanyel would come and carry him off. He was a Herald, a rider of a
demon-horse, and the implacable enemy of all Karse stood for. He was a
mage, which was anathema, of course, and he had the audacity to be a
very powerful mage, one who could turn back the demons that the most
highly skilled Priest-mages could raise, which made him even worse. And
if that wasn't bad enough, it is said by some chroniclers of the time
that he could break the compulsions that the Priests put on their demons and send them back against their own summoners, which made him the King of the Demons so far as our people were concerned."

"That's your history" Firesong replied, watching Karal with peculiar
intensity. "How do you feel about it?" "

I'm getting to that." Karal rubbed the back of his own neck, trying to sort out his thoughts as he loosened tight muscles." I do think it's supremely ironic that the worst accusations about Vanyel have to do with him riding a demon-horse and being a mage, when our own Priests were mages who summoned demons and controlled them." Firesong's sardonic smile had a note of approval in it.

"No one has ever dared to claim that the causes of warfare and the sources of prejudice are ever rational." He scratched Aya under the chin, and was rewarded by a particularly adorable chirrup. "And
religious fervor is often used as an excuse for a great many socially
unacceptable behaviors."

"That's religion as an excuse. Sometimes it seems to me that when
religious fervor enters the mind, the wits pack up entirely and fly out
the ear," Karal replied a bit sourly. "But worst of all is when
powerful, ruthless people use the religious fervor of others to further
their own greed." Aya poked his head out of the jacket again, as if he
found what Karal was saying very interesting. Altra settled himself at
Karal's feet, and there was nothing in the Firecat's demeanor to make
Karal think his own religious guide disapproved of anything he had said
so far.

"All that is true in my experience," Firesong replied with one of his
brilliant, perfect smiles. "Though I'm not that much older than you. So, what do you think Vanyel was really like?"

Karal shrugged. "Of course, I am sure that he must be a very great hero to the Valdemarans; the fact that my people considered him to be such an evil enemy would make that a simple conclusion to come to. Given that he was fighting what I now know to have been very power-hungry and entirely amoral men, most notably one of the worst Sons of the Sun we ever had in all our history. I suppose that he was only doing his duty to protect his people against the rapacious land grabbing of mine. I cannot say that I like that thought. It fills me with shame, in fact." He paused, and a final thought floated to the surface, one that seemed to define the situation.

"I can only say that not even his enemies in Karse ever tried to claim
that he led any armies over the border into our land, and the same
cannot be said of the Karsite commanders. Now, I can't pretend to tell
who was right and who was wrong in those areas where both sides claimed
to have been attacked first, or were provoked into attacking, or where
magic, sabotage, and assassination were allegedly employed, but I can
tell that the Valdemarans never took armies into Karse, but my people
certainly waged war up into Valdemar."

"Very even-handed," Firesong replied approvingly. "No side is always in
the right. Now, we'll change the subject again. I need a religious
opinion from you. What do the Sun-priests have to say about ghosts?"

"As in, what?" he asked. "Unquiet dead? Haunts? Spirits who return to
guide?"

"All of those," Firesong said, making a general gesture.

"Some religions deny that any such manifestations exist, and some
religions are written around them as a form of ancestor worship. What
does the Writ of Vkandis say?"

"The Writ says very little." He frowned, trying to think of what it did
say. "Now that I come to think of it, what it does say is rather
interesting. According to the Writ, no one who is of the Faith, whether
the purest soul or the blackest, could possibly become a ghost. Anyone
born or brought into the Faith will be taken before Vkandis and
judged- 'sorted' is the word used in the Writ. And the good shall be
sorted from the evil; no spirit shall escape the sorting. The evil will
be cast into darkness and great despair, into fear and pain, to repeat
their errors until they have learned to love and serve the Light of
Vkandis. And the good shall be gathered up into the rich meadows of
Heaven, to sing His praises in the everlasting rays, to drink the sweet
waters and bask forevermore in the Glory of the Sun. That's the actual
quote. There's a great deal more about who shall become what rank of
angelic spirit, and what each kind does, but I have a suspicion that all of that is a clerkly conceit. I've got an earlier version of the Writ that doesn't have any of those lists in it."

"Some people even have to have their afterlife ranked, arranged, and
organized," Firesong chuckled. "I hate to say this, but being gathered
up to lie in a meadow sunbathing and singing for all eternity is not my
idea of a perfect afterlife. I should be screamingly bored within the
first afternoon."

Karal laughed. "Maybe not for you, but think about the poor shepherds who were the first Prophets, living in the cold, damp hills of Karse, with rain and fog and damn poor grazing most of the time."

"I suppose for them, rich meadows and sun forever would be paradise,
wouldn't it?" Firesong raised his eyebrows. "All right, so Karsites
can't become ghosts-but what about other people?"

"Well, that's not in the Writ. But there is a tradition that the
unblessed dead become the hungry vengeful ghosts who roam the night.
That's why most Karsites won't venture out after dark without a Priest
to secure their safety." But Firesong's question had asked about more
than mere Karsite tradition, it had been about what Karal himself
thought. "As a Priest, I can exorcise ghosts, in theory. I'm supposed to be able to send any unblessed spirit to the sorting even if they aren't of the Faith, if they want to go. The Writ is kind of vague about what happens to heathen who have the misfortune to worship someone besides Vkandis. Most people assume that they'll be sent to eternal punishment, even if they are good people, but the Writ really doesn't say that, it just says that they will be sorted and sent to 'their places'. It doesn't say what those places are. For all I know, those places could be right here on earth. Tre'valen and Dawnfire are ghosts of a kind, and if what Lo'isha and An'desha have been saying is true, then some of the Kal'enedral are ghosts, too. Or if they aren't ghosts, they certainly aren't physically alive the way Florian and Altra are. So there's no reason why Kal'enel couldn't have "sorted" them Herself, and decreed that their "place" was here.

"Well, what about the Avatars?" Firesong asked, echoing his thoughts.
"Do they count as ghosts?"

"If they aren't, I wouldn't know what else to call them," Karal
admitted. "And even if they aren't 'blessed' in the Karsite sense, they
are anything but evil or hungry. They certainly aren't vengeful either,
so there's no reason for me to interfere with whatever they are doing."
He thought a bit harder. "The thing about exorcism is that if you want
to be exact about it, there are two kinds. One kind just throws the
ghost out of whatever it's possessing and bars it from coming back-it
can still go possess something else somewhere else. The other kind blesses the ghost, opens a path for it so it can see where it's supposed to be going, and gives it some help to break the last bonds with the world and send it on its way if it's ready. But it has to be ready. Most Priests combine both kinds, hoping that once the spirit is cast out. it will see the Light and realize it shouldn't be here, but I've also seen reports about spirits that just seemed confused about the fact that they were dead, and in that case, the Priest only used the second kind of exorcism."

"All very well, but suppose you were to see something that you knew was
a ghost-not an Avatar, or anything obviously under the direction of
anyone's god. What would you do about that?" Firesong asked. "Would you
feel that you had to do something about it?"

It was a good question. According to some Priests, he would have to try exorcising anything that looked or acted like a ghost, but that would include the Kal'enedral and the Avatars, and he dashed well knew that he wasn't going to even breathe the word "exorcism" around them. "Personally, I suppose I would try to exorcise anything that was harmful, send on anything that was ready, and leave everything else alone." He still didn't see what relevance any of this had to their current situation, but presumably Firesong had some idea where he was going with all of this.

Firesong appeared to make up his mind about something, for his
expression became a bit more animated and less contemplative." Look," he said, "I've been asking you all these questions because I need your
help, yours and Altra's, and there are some religious problems involved. I made the acquaintance of some real ghosts, and you wouldn't mistake them for anything else. One of them is an ancestor of mine. Physically, they're bound to a place up north, right up at the northern
border of Valdemar." 

Oh, no  ...  he must be afraid that when the Final Storm hits, these ghosts of his are going to be destroyed or hurt in some way. Karal interrupted him. "Firesong, I hope you weren't planning on asking me to exorcise them. I mean, I'm sorry that one of your ancestors is physically bound to the earth, and if I could, I would be glad to help him, but I don't think it's possible. I told you, all I would be able to do without the spirits being ready, is to force them out of the place they were bound to. Even so, I doubt I could do anything for them at such a great distance."

Now it was Firesong's turn to interrupt him. "No, Karal, that was not what I had in mind!" he exclaimed, but he seemed more amused at the conclusion that Karal had leaped to than annoyed. "Hear me out. An'desha, Sejanes, and I all agree that we simply need more mages here at the Tower, powerful mages, and we're just not going to get them here to us in time. We need Adepts at the least, and every Adept within physical range of the Tower is needed right where he is. We can't build Gates to bring in human or nonhuman Adepts from farther away, and Altra can't bring in anyone mortal-but what about ghosts?" Ghosts. One of Firesong's ancestors. North of Valdemar.

And an Adept. The trend of the questions suddenly formed into a pattern, and Karal stared at him in mingled horror and fascination. "This ghost-this ancestor-it wouldn't be Vanyel Ashkevron, would it?" he asked, his voice trembling in spite of his effort to control it. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. Discussing Vanyel Demonrider in a stract was one thing. Seriously discussing bringing him here was another!

He wanted to beg Firesong to tell him that it was not Vanyel Ashkevron
he was talking about, but one look in Firesong's face told him
differently.

"I think it would be a very good idea, Karal," Florian said diffidently. "Vanyel is an Adept. If it is possible, I think it should be done."

"I won't ask how this came about," Karal said flatly. "I won't ask how
you discovered that Vanyel Demonrider was still...  in existence." He
closed his eyes and shook his head. "I cannot believe I am hearing this."

"Boy, if you require more votes on this, you have mine," said the sword Need. "I've met the man, though I doubt he'll recall it. He and Stefen would be a tremendous asset to the group here. They might even give us that edge we need to beat this thing."

Firesong smirked. "The sword is saying that we need an edge. How
appropriate. In any case, the Avatars actually suggested it. There are
some things in the cube-maze notes that suggest we're going to need-well, more skilled people than the last time. The only way we can
think of to get the spirits down here is to send Altra," Firesong said.
"We think that Vanyel, his Companion, and his friend can link themselves to something small enough for Altra to transport."

"We?" Karal asked weakly. "How many of you discussed this?"

"All of the mages," Firesong told him- "That included Need and the
Avatars. And we all agreed. We think we're about to find our answer on
the cube-maze device, which is our first choice, but we need more help
to make it work." Karal looked down at Altra, who gazed back up at him
with interest. "And what do you have to say about this?" he asked the
Firecat.

"Seriously? I think it might work, but I don't know for certain. I'm not a mage as you think of one, but the others seem convinced. There
is only one consideration, and that is why they wanted to talk to you."

"So you were already a party to this?" Karal sighed. "I might have
known. What's the consideration?" A very practical one. This borders on
interference; if I were to just do as you ask, I would be exceeding my
own authority. In order for me to do this, we would need permission from a higher authority, and I cannot be the one to ask for permission."

"I have the feeling that you are not referring to Solaris when you speak of needing permission from a higher authority." Karal bit his lip.

"You are correct, and you are the only Sun-priest here," Altra said
calmly. "So you are the one who must mike the petition. I cannot, and I
cannot do such a thing without that permission. I may advise, guide, and run limited errands up to a point, but this is past that point. I hate to sound like a copper-counting clerk, making a fuss about a
technicality, but if these spirits were Karsite and not Valdemaran,
there would be less of a problem."

"Because of the old enmity?" Karal asked, surprised. "But it was the
Sunlord Himself who ordered truce with Valdemar in the first place!" 

"No. Because these spirits were bound where they are for a reason, and I don't know that this reason has been fulfilled. They may not even know that. Now, even if their purpose not yet fulfilled, they could choose to come here anyway, disobeying the One who offered them the task. But without first receiving permission of Vkandis, I cannot choose to help them come without the risk that I would be disobeying as well, and I do not choose to take that risk."

"I wouldn't ask you to," Karal replied. "I suppose that means I don't have much choice in the matter."

"Judging by the way your friends are staring at you, I would say not." Karal looked up, already feeling pressured and guilty, to meet three sets of eyes-Well, Need didn't have eyes as such, but he sensed her looking through Firesong's, and Florian stood in the doorway, gazing at him with a completely heartrending expression in his huge blue eyes.

The combined weight was too much to bear. "I'll have to go outside," he
gulped, and managed not to stagger as he passed Florian. He -remembered somehow to find his coat, gloves and heavy boots, and pull them all on, but the trip up the tunnel was a complete blank in his mind. He knew very well what he had to do; he'd witnessed many petitions offered up by Solaris and her most trusted Priests, and had studied the form as part of his own education in the priesthood. Like many of the core portions of the Sunlord's Faith, a petition to Vkandis was deceptively simple. The only requirement was that a petition must be made in the full light of day. In the Great Temple, this was accomplished, of course, by virtue of the many windows cut in the upper dome. Here, of course, Karal had only to walk outside.

As befitting a religion founded by poor shepherds, who had little but
what they could carry on their backs, or perhaps the back of a single
donkey, there were no special vestments or vessels, no trappings of any
kind. The only vessel needed was the Priest, and the only Investment a
pure and single-hearted belief that the prayer would be heard. It might
not receive a direct "yes," but it would be heard.

Karal, more than many, had every reason to hold that faith in his heart. He knew that Vkandis would hear him; did he not have Altra with him to prove that? His only question was if he was ready, was worthy, to be answered in any way, even with a "no." He walked a little distance off into the snow, putting a tall drift between himself and the Shin'a'in camp, until there was no sign of activity but his own footprints trailing behind him.

Beside him was the Tower, looming over everything, as it loomed over
their lives. All around him was the dazzling whiteness of the snow, no
less than knee-deep in some places, and deeper than that in most. This
was a thicker snowpack than he had ever seen before.

It was also thicker than the Shin'a'in had ever seen it before, or so
he'd been told. This was a terrible winter, and it could so easily get
worse-assuming that the Plains themselves survived the Final Storm and
what might happen to those ancient weapons still in the Tower.

Even if I'm not worthy, the cause is, he finally decided, and turned his face up to the sun, spreading his arms wide.

Some took great care with each word when they made prayers for a
particular purpose, but Karal and his mentor Ulrich had never seen the
sense in that. "They are like courtiers, trying to find the most
unctuous phrase in hopes that their prince will throw them a bauble,"
Ulrich had said in disgust.

"There is nothing in the Writ about making fine speeches for Vkandis'
ear. Vkandis understands us far better than we could ever find words
for." So Karal simply stood with every bit of him open to the light of
the sun, the light that stood for the greater Light, and let that Light
become all that he was. He kept his petition to the bare facts.

This is how we stand. This is what we have been doing. This is what we need to do. We know that this will not guarantee our success, but we think it is necessary. Will You grant Your permission for Your servants to do this. This was the first time he had ever made such a prayer alone, and he trembled all over at his own audacity. He made of himself nothing but the question, and waited, like an empty bowl, for the answer.

The sun burned on in the endless blue of heaven, as he struggled to lose himself in the Light. And in the moment that he actually did so, Vkandis showed His face.

The sun blazed up, doubling, tripling in size; he felt the light burning his face even as he held his gaze steady and unflinching.

You can bear the Light. But can you bear the place where there are no
sheltering shadows?

The sun split into two, three, a dozen suns, surrounding him in a circle of suns, creating a place where there could be no hint of darkness and nowhere to hide. The suns settled upon the earth around him, dancing upon the face of the snow, but neither melting nor consuming it. Still he waited, all fear burned out of him, empty of everything but faith and the waiting, and he breathed steadily and deeply once for every dozen heartbeats.

You can bear being without shadow. But can you bear being only in Light?

The dozen suns blazed up again, and began circling around him, faster
and faster, until they blurred into a solid ring of white light. Then
the ring flared and he had to cover his eyes for a moment; and when he
looked again, he stood, not in the snow of the Plains, but in the heart
of the sun, with light above and below, and all about him, in the heart
of the Light and the Light became part of him.

But this, he realized, was not a completely new experience.

Although he had not had the memory until this moment, this was what had
happened when he acted as a Channel for the release of the great
energies of the first weapon they had triggered.

The Light had taken away his fears then, and it did so again, then illuminated every corner of his heart. Yes, there were faulty places,
poorly-mended places, even spots of faint shadow; Karal saw and
acknowledged those, as he renewed a pledge to see them made good. But,
he said silently to that great Light, what I am does not matter. This
thing that I ask is not for me, nor even for these few who are here with me. This is for all our peoples; and for peoples we do not even know.

The Light answered him with a question of its own. Is this also for
those of the Empire?

He replied immediately, and simply. Yes.

Had he not already pointed out that most of the people living in the
Empire had nothing to do with the terrible things their leaders had
done? Why should they not be protected?

Even your enemies? came the second question.

He answered it as he had the other. Yes.

If protecting his enemies was the cost of protecting the innocent, then
so be it. Fanatics said, "Kill them all, and let God sort them out." He
would rather say, "Save them all, and let God sort them out, for we have not the right to judge." There was a timeless moment of waiting, and the Light flooded him with approval.

Then that is My answer, came the reply. Yes.

The Light vanished.

He found himself standing in the snow, his feet numb, his eyes watering, with his entire being filled with the answer.

He was a scintillating bowl full of Yes, and he carried that answer back to the Tower as carefully as an acolyte carried a bowl of holy water.

"You don't remember anything?" Lyam asked, alive with curiosity, as he
helped Karal carry a new set of notes up to the storage chamber. Karal
shook his head regretfully, and watched where he was putting his feet.
The last few steps out of the workroom were worn enough to be tricky.

"All I remember is going out into the snow. After that-nothing, until I
woke up again with the answer." He made an apologetic face. "Sorry, I
know you'd love to note all of this down, and it's not a priestly secret or anything, but I just can't remember what happened."

The hertasi lashed his tail, perhaps with impatience. "You could have just gone out, come back, and pretended to have the answer," Lyam began. "Not that you would have, but-"

"That wouldn't be as easy as you think. I might have fooled anyone but
Florian and Altra, but never either of them," Karal replied finally. "And I'm not sure it would have fooled Need; I think she was a priestess before she was a sword, and if she was, she'll have ways of knowing when people make up answers they say are from their gods."

"If you say so," Lyam said, though his tone was dubious.

"And it wouldn't ever have fooled the Avatars," he continued forcefully. "How could it? How could you ever fool them about something like that?" Lyam conceded defeat at that; although he might not be completely convinced of the supernatural nature of Florian, Altra, or Need, he was entirely convinced that the Avatars were something altogether out of his experience. He regarded them with a mixture of his usual intense curiosity mingled with awe and a little uncertainty. Karal found that mildly amusing. He had the distinct feeling that right up until the moment the hertasi first met the Avatars, little Lyam had been something of an agnostic-willing to admit in the reality of something beyond himself, but not at all willing to concede that it had anything to do with him and his everyday world.

Like many another historian before him, Lyam was only convinced by
verifiable facts. That was what would make him a good historian, rather
than someone who was content to repeat all the same old erroneous
gossip. The hertasi and his mentor Tarm believed passionately in the
truth, would do anything to find out the truth, and would probably do
anything to defend the truth. They might find exonerating reasons for a
friend who robbed another of property, but if that friend falsified
historical documents or concealed relevant facts, they would show him no leniency.

Karal and Lyam arranged the notes in order with the last batch and
sealed up the now-full box and put it with those holding Tarm's precious chronicles. "If you've got a moment, could you give me a hand?" he asked Lyam. "You're better at handling hot rocks than I am."

"That's because you humans are poorly designed," the hertasi replied
with a toothy grin. "You should have nice thick skin on your hands,
preferably with a toughened outer hide or scales, so you can pick up
things without hurting yourselves."

"Remind me to ask for that option, the next time I order a new body,"
Karal countered, as Lyam followed him into the bedchamber. "Then again,
isn't that why you were created?"

"To make up for your human shortcomings?" Lyam laughed. "Why, yes.
Someone besides divine beings needed to. And just try getting some ghost or Avatar to cook a good meal or mend clothing! We're indispensable!" Karal laughed with Lyam, and had decided, given the sad condition that Altra had been in when he'd come back from delivering the teleson to Haven, that he would be prepared for a similar situation. When Altra returned from the Forest of sorrows, he would find food, good water, and a warm bed waiting for him, already 
prepared and standing ready. The guess was that Altra could return at any time after two days had passed, so in the afternoon of the second
day Karal had arranged for all those things. The moment Altra returned
he could eat and sleep without even having to ask for food or a warm
bed. Karal kept heated stones tucked into the bed he'd made up, and as
the warm, meat-laden broth he prepared got a little thick and past its
prime flavor, he was usually able to find someone willing to eat the old while he prepared a new batch.

Lyam had been the latest beneficiary of Karal's cooking, and so he
wasn't at all averse to helping Karal place more heated stones into the
bedding. "So, what do you think of all this?" the hertasi asked.
"Doesn't it seem kind of strange to be bringing in ghosts? I've never
even met anyone who'd ever seen a ghost before this, had you?"

"It's no stranger than the Avatars, and they're ghosts, I suppose,"
Karal replied honestly. "I've never seen a ghost either before I got
here, but it really doesn't bother me." Lyam rolled his eyes with
disbelief. "How can you be so calm about this? Firesong is planning on
bringing a spirit here, and an ancient hero at that! Why, that would be
like-like calling up Skandranon, or--or Baron Valdemar, or-or the first
Son of the Sun! Aren't you excited? Or scared?"

Logically, Karal knew he should be both those things, and yet he couldn't manage to dredge up any real feelings about the situation. It just didn't seem real enough to him, or, perhaps it was only as real as he'd gotten used to. It was not that he was precisely numb about these sorts of events, it was just that long ago he had crossed over his threshold of amazement and now things were only a matter of degree. "Vanyel Ashkevron lived a long time ago, Lyam," he said after a long moment of thought. "I know that you're quite passionate about history and to you things that happened hundreds of years ago are as vital as things that happened last year, but honestly, I can't get very emotional about this. Especially not after having met living people who were considered to be very serious enemies of Karse before the Alliance, and discovering that they were really quite like people I knew at home. You know, I'll believe these spirits are going to be here when they arrive, and until then, I don't see any reason to get excited."

"What do you mean, you discovered enemies of Karse were like people you
knew?" Lyam wanted to know, as he tried unsuccessfully to juggle three
recently-smoking stones. They thudded one by one onto the ground and he
scuttled after one that was rolling away, then tucked the last of the
hot rocks into Altra's bedding. He flicked his tail as his only comment.

"I actually know people who lost family members to Captain Kerowyn's
mercenaries, and then, she turned into one of my teachers when I got to
Haven," Karal told him. "I found out that she didn't actually eat
babies, and she wasn't any more of a monster than any good military
commander. And another one of my teachers was a gentleman called
Alberich, who actually deserted Karse and his position as a Captain in
the Army. He was Chosen, by a Companion who smuggled himself right into
Karse! They called him 'the Great Traitor' before the Alliance, and yet I found out later than he was instrumental in bringing the Alliance about. If you believed everything you heard, he was half demon and half witch and was perfectly capable of any atrocity you could name. He turned out to be a great deal like Kerowyn, except maybe his sense of humor is darker than hers."

"Interesting," Lyam said, his eyes lighting up. "I don't suppose you'd
be willing to tell me about all that?" He reached into the pouch that
never left his side and took out a silverpoint and paper as he asked
that, and Karal didn't have the heart to refuse him. He told the story
of his own journey into Valdemar, which seemed to have occurred a
hundred years ago, and to some other person entirely. He answered Lyam's questions as best he could, and as honestly as he could, even when the answers made him look rather stupid.

Since Lyam was very interested in the details of his thoughts as his
opinion of Valdemar and its inhabitants changed, he was as open as
possible.

In many ways, he was a bit surprised at the change in him self as he
tried to explain himself to Lyam. The talking and questioning helped to
fill the time and allay his anxieties, too, and for that reason alone he would have been glad of Lyam's company.

There was always the possibility that all of this would be for nothing;
Altra could go and request help, even present Firesong's personal
petition to his ancestor Vanyel, but that didn't mean that the spirits
were going to cooperate. For one thing, they might not be who they
claimed they were. For another, they might not be very interested in
helping old enemies.

After all, Altra was a representative of Vanyel's old nemesis-and for
Vanyel, what was ancient history to Karal was very much a part of his
personal memory. This could all be a plot.

They could be constructing a trap to hold the spirits here, far from
Valdemar and the border they were supposed to be guarding.

The spirits might also be unwilling or unable to leave what had been
their home. They hadn't in all this time, so why would they now? They
might simply not be able to help, and why make the long and dangerous
journey to the Tower just to sit and do nothing?

They might not be willing to take the chance that this might start out
to be a need for their services, but turn into a situation where Karal
could eliminate them entirely. After all, once they were here and in his power, Karal might change his mind about them and take it into his head to try an exorcism.

Then shortly after dawn on the third day, Altra returned, and all the
doubts were resolved.

Karal was in his bed, and Lyam shook him out of a dark, deep, and
dreamless slumber. It took him a moment to understand what the hertasi
was trying to tell him.

He scrambled out of his bedroll and pulled on his cloth's from the night before as soon as it penetrated into his sleep-fuddled mind that Altra was back. He filled a bowl with the hot, rich meat broth he had waiting on a little charcoal brazier, and followed Lyam out into the main room.

Not only was every member of their own party gathered around the
Firecat, but a goodly number of the Kal'enedral as well. And if Altra
had looked worn out when he brought Sejanes and Master Levy in, he
looked positively flattened now. He lay on the floor, panting and
disheveled, surrounded by people who all seemed to be talking at once.
Without paying any attention to anything else, Karal pushed in among the others and placed the bowl of hot broth under Altra's nose.

The Firecat cast him a look of undying gratitude and plunged his face
into it, taking great gulps of the liquid rather than lapping it up
daintily as he usually did.

"They need a physical link to the real world," he said as if he was
continuing an earlier statement. Karal reflected that being able to
Mindspeak was a great advantage in mealtime conversation; you could go
right on talking and no one would ever accuse you of bad table manners.
It was also fascinating to him that Tarm, Altra, and Florian could all
make their thoughts heard even by those, like Sejanes and Master Levy~
who did not have the Gift of Mindspeech themselves. "So there it is; and I do wish there had been an easier way to transport that bit of wood here than by having me fetch it. It will take them a bit of time to use it to bring themselves here, so be patient. If I'd had to bring them as well, I would have run the risk of losing them in the Void. Besides, Vanyel doesn't particularly care for Gates, and jumping is a lot like Gating, especially now."

"Why wouldn't an Adept care for Gates?" Sejanes wondered aloud when the
Firecat's Mindspeech had been related to him.

"Let's just say that I had some unpleasant experiences involving Gates
in the past," replied a new voice, a pleasant and musical tenor that had the peculiar quality of sounding as if it came from the bottom of a
well, a quality that it shared with some of the Kal'enedrals' voices.

Karal looked where everyone else was looking, but saw no new person
there, only an old, decrepit, weather-beaten wreck of a musical
instrument. It might at one time have been a lute or a gittern or some
such thing; there was no trace at all of its original finish, nor its
strings or tuning pegs, and it had probably not been playable for
centuries. If this was the physical link that Altra had brought with
him, it was certainly a peculiar choice.

"On the whole, I would just rather not have to deal with Gates at all if I have any choice in the matter," the voice continued, and the air above the old instrument began to shiver. "You'll have to give us a few
moments here, as my new friend Altra said. None of us are used to
drawing our energy from ley-lines and nodes anymore, and we're rather
out of practice."

"We're in no hurry, Ancestor, and we have had some interesting
experiences involving you and Gates ourselves," Firesong replied calmly, as the hair on the back of Karal's neck began to crawl of its own accord. It had been all very well to tell Lyam that he was neither
excited nor afraid when the arrival of these spirits had been an
abstract concept, but now... Now there was an atavistic chill running
down his spine, a cold lump in his stomach, and the knowledge that he
would really rather be anywhere but here, as the shimmering air
developed three glowing forms, which took on substance even as he
watched. First, there were only two vaguely human shapes and another,
larger one that might have resembled a horse. Then the shapes became
more defined and detailed, although they never actually attained the
solidity of the Kal'enedral or the fiery substance of the Avatars.

Maybe that was why he was suddenly afraid; the leshy'a Kal'enedral
looked just like any of the others, and the Avatars were so exotic as to fit in the same categories as Firecats and other manifestations of the gods. But there was nothing solid about these, nor so alien that he
could bear them because they were so new to him.

The first to become really clear was a strikingly handsome man, and if
this was Firesong's ancestor Vanyel, it was obvious where he got his
beauty. There was no color to any of these spirits, so Karal could not
have told if the clothing this spirit had chosen to "wear" happened to
be antique Herald's Whites or not, but the cut was like nothing he had
seen in his lifetime. The spirit had long hair, though not as long as
Firesong's or Silverfox's, and "wore" no jewelry of any kind.

He searched the group gathered around him, and his gaze lit on Karal and remained there. In spite of the ghost's smile, Karal was not reassured.

"So this is our young Sun-priest," the spirit said, as Karal froze. "If
I ever have the opportunity, remind me to tell you of another young
servant of Vkandis that I met, who proved to me that not all of the folk who used Vkandis' Name to justify their actions should be lumped
together into a single category." The spirit's smile widened-quite as
winsome a smile as anything Firesong had ever produced-and some of
Karal's chill melted away. But not, by any means, all of it. For some
reason-perhaps simply that these beings looked, acted and sounded
exactly like what they were supposed to be-Karal found Vanyel entirely
unnerving.

As the second spirit manifested, Karal didn't find him any easier on the nerves, perhaps because he couldn't seem to make up his mind whether to look like a muscular, square-jawed fellow who was a bit taller than Vanyel, or a slight, triangular-faced, large-eyed lad who was shorter and more slender than the Herald-Mage. Just looking at him made Karal feel dizzy, an when the third shape came into focus, it didn't help any, for it wavered between the form of a Companion and that of a determined woman with a firm chin and the look of a hunter about her.

"If you all don't mind, I'd like to see that bed Karal has been keeping
warm for me," Altra said firmly, and when Karal looked down, he saw that the Firecat had polished off every drop of the broth, and was on his feet, swaying a little.

"You go ahead, my friend," Vanyel said genially. "We three need to have
our first consultation with the mages, and having too many people trying to explain things at once is not going to get us anywhere. We will try to keep the noise down so you may rest better."

Since Altra did not look at all steady, Karal picked him up bodily and
carried him to that waiting bed, with Florian pacing alongside him,
offering a shoulder for support. Lyam cleared the way ahead of them,
quite authoritative for such a short fellow. Altra was quite limp with
exhaustion, and Karal wondered if he should say anything forbidding
Altra to make any more jumping expeditions. Did he have the right to
demand such things?

"That's the last. That is absolutely the last," Altra said weakly as
Karal laid the Firecat in his warmed bed. "I know you aren't seeing any
physical manifestations of the Storms right now, but believe me, where I have to go, they're there. It was like trying to swim a river in flood, and cats are not particularly suited to swimming, let me tell you. I do not have the strength to try that a second time."

"Good, because I was going to ask you not to," Karal replied." I don't
think I could stand losing you."

"Well, you won't. That's that advantage of having a Cat instead of a Horse as a partner… we don't go running off to sacrifice ourselves at the sound of the first trumpet call," Altra said, feebly winking at Karal on the side opposite of Florian. We're sensible. And right now, my sensible side demands some cosseting. I want sleep"

"Oh, do go right ahead and sleep," Florian said with mock-indignation. "Don't mind us, we just want to gather worshipfully around your slumbering form and tell stories about your bravery and virtue."

"Fine, you do that, and about time," the Firecat replied in the
same spirit. "Just don't wake me up." And with that, he closed his eyes, his even breathing seeming to indicate that he had fallen straight asleep.

"Well, what do you think?" Karal asked the Companion, certain he was
about to get a litany of praise thinly disguised as a lesson in
Valdemaran history.

"I think that I'm hoping our latest visitors remain UN manifest most of
the time," Florian replied promptly, his uneasiness quite apparent in
his mind-voice. "Yfandes gives me the-what's Lyam's term for it?-the
collywobbles, that's it. They're all three dreadfully intimidating."

"Really?" Karal arched an eyebrow at him. "I didn't think you could be
intimidated by anything!"

"I can, and she's it." Florian was quite serious, and it was Karal's turn to put a steadying hand on his shoulder. "Not even a Grove-Born gives me the urge to kneel and knock my head on the ground the way she does!"

"Well, don't do that," Karal advised. "For one thing, you'll hurt your
head. For another, I'm sure you have nothing to feel inferior about." He knew how Florian felt, though, and he sympathized. Hopefully these newcomers would stay invisible; if he couldn't see them, maybe he wouldn't keep having the urge to do some bowing and scraping of his own.

"Ghosts and spirit-swords, Avatars and leshy'a Kal'enedral; we have more not-mortal things around here than we have mortal ones!" he complained. "And when you add in bondbirds and hertasi and kyree and Companions, the weird creatures outnumber ordinary humans to the point where we're a minority!"

"It could be worse," Florian pointed out pensively. "This could be a Vale. Or k'leshya Vale! Then you'd have dyhell and tervardi and gryphons, and I don't know what all else. Only the gods know what weird pets the K'Leshya brought up out of the South with them." 

Karal just sighed and sat beside Altra with his chin on his hand. "The worst part of it is that a mind-talking horse is the most normal of all  the folk around here" Florian only whickered, and mind-laughed weakly.

Fortunately for Karal's peace of mind and Florian's sense of profound
inferiority, the three newcomers mostly remained "unmanifest" to save
energy, and simply tendered advice to Firesong by means of Mindspeech.
Karal had the feeling that Vanyel was a little hurt that the Karsite was so nervous in Vanyel's presence, but there was no help for it. Karal himself wasn't entirely sure why Vanyel made him so edgy. It might simply have been that the Herald-Mage was everything that Karal was not, but without the somewhat inflated self-esteem of his descendant Firesong. It might have been unconscious residue from all the "Demon Vanyel" stories he'd been told as a child. And it might only have been that Vanyel was so obviously everything that a Karsite feared about the night, and although Karal had been working with stranger beings, Vanyel's presence was simply the one bit of strangeness that was too much.

He had his own problems that were similar to Florian's the fact that of
all of them, he was really the most ordinary, and aside from his ability as a Channel, apparently the least necessary. He was not brilliant like Master Levy nor a mage like Sejanes or Firesong; he could not translate the ancient texts as Tarm and Lyam could, nor had he the knack of amusing everyone and helping them see solutions to their problems as Silverfox did.

It was Silverfox, however, who made him realize that the things about
him that were the most commonplace were the ones that made him the most
valuable in this group of those who were out of the ordinary.

"I'm glad we have you here, Karal," Silverfox said to him the next day,
as he shared stew that Altra had not been awake to eat with the
kestra'chern.

"Me?" he said with surprise. "Why?"

"Because your strength is that you are forced to handle wildly
extraordinary events and people-and you just do it, without complaint.
You set the rest of us an example. After all, if you can handle all
this, we should certainly be able to."

Karal made a face. "I think I'm being damned with faint praise," he replied ironically.

"It isn't meant to be faint praise," Silverfox said earnestly. "What I mean is that you are finding great strength and grace inside yourself, and you prove to the rest of us that we should be able to do the same." He gazed into Karal's eyes with intense concentration. "You keep us centered, reminding us that there is a world out there beyond these walls. You give us perspective in this rather rarefied company, and help keep us all sane." His smile was just as charming as anything Firesong could conjure. "In your own way, my dear young friend, you are
a constant reminder of everything normal and good about the world that
we are trying to protect." Karal blushed; that was all he could do, in
the face of words like that.

"He's right, you know," Altra seconded. "It isn't the great mystics and
saints who do the real day-to-day work of keeping people's faith firm,
it's the ordinary priest-the good man who goes on being good, no matter
what he has to face. Ordinary people know in their hearts that they
could never withstand the trials that a saint undergoes, but if they see a person who is just like they are, and watch him bearing up under those trials, they know that they can do it, too. And as for the great ones, when they see an ordinary man bearing extraordinary burdens, they are inspired to take on far more than they might otherwise do." Now he was blushing so hotly his skin felt sunburned.

"Meanwhile, we are having to face a crisis," Silverfox continued, his
smile fading as he sobered. "And it is coming on us swiftly. Firesong
wanted me to tell you that they're going to use the cube-maze, after
all." That cooled his blushes in a hurry and he nodded. Silverfox
reached for his chin and tilted it up, looking deeply into his eyes,
then nodded as if satisfied by what he saw there. "You know that this is the best choice of all of them," he stated. "Firesong says that of all the weapons, this offers the most gain." He said nothing about risk, but he didn't have to, for Karal already knew that the risk of using any of those weapons was great, and they really could not know how great until they triggered one.

Karal nodded. "And I knew that it was quite likely I would have to work
as a Channel again. It's all right; I'm not afraid this time." Strangely enough, he wasn't.

"He wanted me to tell you, so that you would know he doesn't intend you to have to bear any more than any of the rest of them." Silverfox's ironic expression filled in the rest-things best left unsaid. Karal knew, though, that Firesong would not be able to lie successfully to the kestra'chern, and Silverfox would not allow him to put Karal in for more than an equal share of peril. In a sense, Silverfox was vouching for the Adept.

Karal shrugged awkwardly. "The cube-maze was their first choice the last time, they just couldn't come up with enough information to make it work. I'd rather be channeling for something that is their first choice, rather than their third or fourth." He didn't pretend to understand half of what the mages were talking about, but the device they called a "cube-maze," which resembled a pile of hollow cast-metal cubes stacked rather randomly atop one another, was supposed to have had a nonliving core to do the channeling. Either Urtho could never get the thing to work correctly in the first place, or else the core was no longer functioning. In either case, there was no one here that was capable of making a device to act as the channel. That meant Karal was the only hope of making this thing work. It might work better with a living channel; that might have been one of the reasons it had failed in the first place. A living channel could make decisions; a nonliving channel couldn't.

Like the other devices here, the cube-maze didn't look anything like a
weapon. It was rather pretty, in fact; there was an odd sheen or patina
to the blue metal surface that refracted rainbows, like oil on water.
One of the truly strange things about all of these weapons was that none of them looked alike. It was difficult to imagine how the same mind could have come up with so many dissimilar devices.

"Karal!" Master Levy hailed him from the main room. "The teleson is
free, and Natoli is on it." Silverfox cut short Karal's attempt at
excusing himself politely.

"Go, off with you!" the kestra'chern said. "You can talk to me anytime, and I'm not half so pretty as Natoli is." That last comment made him blush all over again, but this time he didn't care. His long-distance romancing of Natoli appeared to charm everyone. They all stayed discreetly out of the way when he spoke to her, and they all seemed to go out of their way to give him occasions to talk to her on the teleson.

Altra followed on his heels, to act as the facilitator for the
conversation. It was amazing that Altra didn't ever tease him about
anything that passed between himself and Natoli, but even Altra
apparently regarded the growing relationship as a private matter between the two of them, and not for any outsider, not even a Firecat, to intrude upon. No matter what either of the two said to each other, Altra never commented on it, either during the conversation or afterward. In fact, Karal was able to completely forget about Altra's presence most of the time.

But Natoli had disturbing news for him that had nothing whatsoever to do with their personal matters. "Elspeth and Darkwind reported that they are already getting Storms in Hardorn," she said gravely. "They aren't dangerous yet, but it's only a matter of time before things degenerate. We have already started preparations here to handle whatever comes up."

"That's probably why the mages and all finally made up their minds which device to use," he told her. "I suppose Master Levy must have agreed on their choice, since he is the one doing the mathematical modeling for the solution." He hesitated, and looked down at his hands a moment, then looked back up and told her the truth. "I'm going to have to be a Channel again." She didn't say anything, but her face grew pale and she bit her lip.

"Well," she finally managed, "that's what you're there for. You have to do your job, just as I have to do mine." She rallied a bit. "Speaking of my job, I'm in charge of some of the emergency plans. We're going to have to evacuate the Palace at the very least, and maybe even parts of Haven, just in case that node under the Palace goes unstable. All the highborn have gone home, and as of today they've dismissed the Collegia and sent the trainees home as well. Even the Healers have dispersed. The trainees that don't have homes to go to are supposed to go off with their Masters if they're Bards, off to one of the Houses of Healing as Healer-trainees, or riding circuit with full Heralds if they're still in Grays. It's a little crazy around here, since things still have to get done, and it's getting to be that whoever has a pair of hands free just does whatever it takes. They say that the gryphons will stay until the last moment and set spells to keep out looters, then they'll fly away. It'll be a relief when everyone is actually gone." He didn't have to ask why she was still there; she could not sit back while others were in danger any more than he could.

She would probably remain there until the very end because that was what her father would do. Herald Rubrik was in Karse, so perhaps she felt it was up to her to take on the familial duties. "Well," he replied. "You do what you have to, right? If your job is to be there, then you need to do it." Clumsy words, but he hoped they told her what he wanted to say-that he still would never ask her to stop doing what she considered to be her job just to be "safe." If there even was any place "safe" anymore. "I want you to know that I really don't think any of us here are in any more or less danger than you are, he continued, trying to give her reassurance. "The one thing I am concerned about is that after the last time, the others here are all so fiercely determined to protect me that I'm more afraid for them than I am for myself."

She smiled tremulously. "You would be anyway. Just promise me that you'll let them take care of you. Not at the expense of getting the job done, but let them protect you from what they can."

"If you'll do the same," he demanded. "Before you go flinging yourself
into exploding boilers, wait and see if someone more suited to that
particular job is already doing it! You know, it just might be that,
capable as you are, someone else would manage that particular rescue a
little better than you!"

"You drive a hard bargain," she retorted, and shook her head, a little
of her old humor returning to her eyes. "All right, I promise."

"And so do I," he pledged softly, and basked in her smile.

The wind of a full-scale blizzard howled and whined outside the windows
of his suite, and icy drafts forced their way past windows and thick
curtains, but Baron Melles didn't care. Enveloped in one of the heavy
woolen tunics that had become fashion out of necessity, with a second
layer of knitted winter silk beneath that, he brooded pleasantly over
the reports of his network of spies within the households of the members of the Court. Virtually every one of those pieces of paper reported a new attitude toward him on the part of anyone of any importance.

Fear. He was delighted at their reaction. They might hate him, they
might envy him, they might (rarely) even admire him for his
ruthlessness-but they all feared him now, and feared to have even the
appearance of opposing him.

He shifted his weight in his chair, and repositioned his feet on the
warming pan beneath his desk. His last object lesson was more effective
than he had thought it would be, and had spread far beyond the immediate household and friends of his target. Clearly it was much wiser and more expedient to show that the children of his would-be enemies were vulnerable than it was to threaten the enemies themselves. And as for those who had no children, well, there wasn't a single one of them who didn't have some other person for whom they cherished tender feelings.

Anyone who would threaten a child obviously would have no difficulty
with targeting an aged and infirm parent, or a sibling, or a lover. Even Tremane had dependents he would have been very upset at losing-that old mage, Sejanes, for one.

It was ironic in many ways, for it would have been very easy for any of
them to make him or herself invulnerable.

There had not been another person besides himself here at Court who had
read and understood the lesson old Charliss had given to them in the
course of his own life: Trust no one, care for no one, depend on no one. They had all persisted, even in the face of obvious disadvantages, to fall in love, make friendships rather than alliances, and allow
themselves the cracks in their armor that relationships made.

Tremane never knew that he made me what I am today, even as he made me
his enemy when we were cadets. He betrayed me to the Colonel, and ruined my career in the Army. And for what? Because I was doing what everyone else wanted to do, but didn't have the intelligence or the audacity to try. I trusted him because he said he was my friend, and he betrayed me. Without that, if I had remained in the cadet corps as he did, I would not have seen Charliss' example for what it was.

He had stopped being a sheep that day and had become one of the
wolves-as any of them could have. Well, that was all their own fault,
and their stupidity, and that was why he was the Emperor's Heir and not
one of them.

Not even the memory of that long-ago humiliation of being cast out of
the corps could spoil this triumph. He had finally achieved the goal he
had set for himself that day-to make anyone of any importance look at
him and fear. It was in this mood of unusual good humor that General
Thayer found him, and destroyed his mood with a single sentence.

His valet Bors showed the General in; Thayer wore a regulation Army
cloak over his uniform tunic, and fingerless gloves to keep his hands
warm. Melles greeted him with pleasure, although he did not rise.

But Thayer had not come to make a social call. "Melles, we're in
trouble," he rumbled. And as usual, the General came straight to the
point without even waiting to take the chair that Melles offered him.

Where had that come from? "How can we be in trouble?" Melles asked, with more than a bit of surprise. "We've got order in the smaller cities, and the larger ones are coming around. Food is getting in, and you're even making a small profit. Rioting has stopped in most places, and the subversives are beginning to be regarded as lunatics. We might have lost the lands Charliss brought under the Imperial banner and some of the provinces, but-"

"But the Army doesn't want you in charge," Thayer replied, bluntly.
"That last little trick you played was one too many. The word from the field is that they don't intend to establish order just to put a baby killer on the Iron Throne. Word of your power play has been traveling farther and faster than either of us thought it would. I don't know how, but in spite of everything, virtually everyone I've contacted already knows all about it, and knows that you were the one who put the body in the crib." He scowled. "That was a stupid ploy, Melles. Your average soldier may be a hard man, but the one thing he won't put up with is threatening a baby."

Melles frowned. "But there was nothing to link me with that incident,"
he objected.

Thayer snorted with utter contempt, as the wind rattled the windowpanes
and a draft made the candle flames flicker. "Please. Not everyone is an inbred idiot, especially not in the Army. You're an assassin, however much you pretend not to be; everyone knows it, and everyone knows you're the only one who not only could have done what you did, but who is cold-blooded enough to follow up on the threat if you had to. And I repeat to you; the Army won't support a baby killer, and there's an end to it."

A cold anger burned in the back of Melles' throat, as cold as the
howling winds outside. "That's fine sentiment from people who kill for  a living," he said with equal contempt. "I'm sure they ask the age of
every peasant with a boar-spear who opposes them in the field, and make
certain to leave insurgent villages untouched in case they might kill a
few children."

Thayer's face flushed with anger, but somehow he kept his temper even in the face of Melles' provocative words. "I could point out that the Army operates under certain laws, and that when a soldier kills someone, he does it openly, under conditions where his opponent has an
equal chance of killing him. But that would be specious and we both know it-and it's not the point."

"Oh?" Melles asked sardonically. "And just what is the point?"

"The point is that the average soldier believes all those things,"
Thayer said, pounding the desk for emphasis. "Whether or not they are true. Truth has no bearing on this, and you damned well know it. The average soldier thinks he is going to defend the honor of the Empire against adult enemies, and that makes him feel superior to any assassin, and vastly superior to someone who not only threatens the safety of a child, but threatens a child of his own people."

"Never mind that this same noble soldier would skewer the children of a
rebellious village without a second thought or a moment of hesitation,"
Melles grumbled, although he saw the logic in Thayer's argument. Thayer
was right. The truth didn't matter here, and he, who was a practiced
hand in manipulat Melles ground his teeth in frustration, for Thayer was right.

Although, unlike Tremane, he had never gotten out of the cadets to serve in the military forces of the Empire, he knew the structure and makeup. The Generals were mostly men who had made a career of the military as had their fathers before them. Their wives were the daughters of similar men, their families all related to other military families. They employed former military men as guards and servants, employed the wives of such men as maids and housekeepers. Their positions were embedded in multiple layers of protection, and they could not be dismissed or demoted out of hand. The High Commanders could be eliminated, for they were mostly nobles like Grand Duke Tremane, but there was no getting rid of the Generals. They were like a wolf pack; you couldn't separate a victim, for none of them stood alone, and if you made a move against one, the whole pack would consolidate long enough to tear your throat out before going back to their own internal jockeying for power.

"You can't touch them, Melles," Thayer warned in an echo of his own
thoughts. "If you try they'll destroy you. They won't put up with that
kind of threat, and they'll close ranks against you. Press it too far,
and they'll call a coup against you. Not even your personal guard can
protect you against an entire Company coming to kill you."

"It's gone right down to the rank and file, you say?" he asked, his
thoughts swirling as wildly as the snow outside.

Thayer nodded, and Melles cursed them all in his mind. He couldn't even
order every General within reach of the capital to come to a meeting,
seal the room, and kill them all at once.

If he tried, the entire Army itself would rise up in revolt. It was only when the Generals were corrupt and hated by their men that you could get away with a tactic like that.

ing perception, should have known that. "Very well. What's to be done?"
Thayer sighed, and finally sank into the chair Melles had offered. "I
don't know," he admitted. "It's not only the Commanders that are talking rebellion, it's the Generals, and the rank and file; and they aren't amenable to the kinds of coercion you can use on the nobles of the Court. Unless we can do something about this, we're going to lose them, and the moment Charliss becomes a Little God, they're going to put someone of their choice on the Iron Throne and you and me in the
ground." 

"We're only in trouble, we aren't defeated yet," he said at last, as a
few ideas began to form out of the chaos. "They might have good
communications, but I have better ones. I have a few more throws of the
dice coming, and I can pick the dice." He began to smile as he saw how
he could completely subvert the entire problem.

Thayer regarded him curiously, and with a certain grudging admiration.
"Have you got something up your sleeve that you haven't told me about?"

He nodded. "I'm not even going to try to deny their rumor, instead I'm
going to give them something else entirely to think about. I always have more up my sleeve that I haven't told anyone about," he replied smugly. "And you should never underestimate the power of the clerical pen."

"What you can't find, you can manufacture, hmm?" Thayer hazarded. "Just
what, exactly, do you have in mind? Are you going to give them a
different enemy to concentrate on?" 

Melles just laughed. "I won't have to manufacture anything. With enough records to search, I can find just about anything I need, and you know yourself that this Empire creates enough paperwork to fill entire warehouses. Give me a few days and I can find all the right evidence to convince the Army that I'm the one they should be supporting, show them that having a so-called 'baby killer' on the throne is the least of the things they should be worrying about, and in the meantime, I can woo them."

"Woo them? Like reluctant girls?" Thayer made a rude and suggestive
noise, but Melles wasn't offended, now that he had the bit in his teeth.

"Wait and see," he responded, plans already growing in the back of his
mind that would probably astonish the older man. "Just wait and see." Thayer was not convinced, but was certain enough of Melles' competence to be willing to buy him some time to work on the schemes that he promised. Thayer stood up, saying so in as many words.

"Just remember that I can't give you too much more time," he warned.
"And it's going to take a great deal to overcome the way they feel about the baby incident. I'm still not certain you're taking that seriously enough."

"Just remember what I told you about the common man and what he needs
and wants," Melles replied. "Then remember that the Army is composed of
those same common men-just with a little more training and a bit of
discipline."

"Hmm." Thayer looked thoughtful at that, and took his leave. As soon as
he was gone, Melles called in all five of his private secretaries.

They were all men, like his valet. Of varied talents and some
interesting training. All five of them were so nondescript that no one
would ever notice them in a crowd. And all of them were adept at getting into even the most carefully guarded records, simply by knowing how to impersonate virtually any type of clerk in the Empire and how to forge anything but the Imperial Seal. When a clerk arrived with appropriate documentation and a request to see something, or even to carry it away, it took a hardier and more independent soul than existed in the Imperial Civil Service to challenge him. 

di you-" I he said, pointing to the first in line. "I want you to go over the military pay records, find out all the units with pay in arrears, and who is in charge of their pay."

He pointed to the next two. "You and you-go through the records of the
units sent to take Hardorn. I want you to match up the requests for
supplies and reinforcements with the orders issued to fill those
requests. I also want the record of every request that was denied, and
on whose authority."

He pointed to the last two. "You two get access to Emperor Charliss' private papers, or at least the ones that are in the Archives. I want all the correspondence between Tremane and Charliss from the time he left for Hardorn to his last known message. Go!" The five clerks departed, scattering like quail before the hunter. He didn't
need to give them any further orders about how to get access to those
papers; one of the reason that these men were no longer in the civil
service was that they had initiative.

Neither initiative nor creativity were rewarded in the Imperial Civil
Service, and those with both often grew frustrated and looked for
employment elsewhere.

Melles next called in his private treasurer.

"You get down to the Imperial Exchequer. I want to know how much out of
the military budget can be spared in hard coin and how much in goods.
Tell the Exchequer that I suspect the Army's pay has been bollixed up,
and we may have to make good in a hurry if we don't want trouble on our
hands." He thought for a moment, and dredged up the relevant fact from
his memory. "If he balks at telling you, just say something about the
road budget; it doesn't matter what, just work it quickly into the
conversation." The man nodded, grinning; every Imperial Exchequer
skimmed a certain amount off the top, it was expected, so long as they
were clever enough not to get caught at it. But if they were caught, the penalties were severe. Melles knew precisely where the current Exchequer was skimming and even had a rough idea of how much; he had made it his business to know, planning to use the information at the right moment. There could be no better moment than now. A good card was no better than a bad one if you never played it.

The treasurer left, and Melles called in his final choice in this
campaign of seduction, one of his odder employees. This rather elegant
specimen was ostensibly Melles' personal poet and playwright, but
although the man was mediocre creatively, he was an absolute genius at
propaganda. Melles didn't use him often, but he was, like the valet, the appropriate scalpel for certain types of surgery. Melles was doubly
fortunate in that the man enjoyed the writing of manipulative propaganda almost as much as poetry. He had told his patron once that when he wrote the former, he considered that he was writing a different kind of drama, one in which the words manipulated the actors, instead of the other way ground. He enjoyed seeing how his works played out on the larger stage of the real world. And as a peculiar kind of reward, Melles regularly financed the production of poetry readings in opulent surroundings, seeing to it that the right critics were flattered, fed, and given enough strong and exotic drink to make even the worst drivel seem inspired.

"I hope you aren't in the throes of creation," Melles said cautiously,
for this was one individual who could not be coerced, only persuaded.
But his loyalty to Melles was based on firm self-interest and was
utterly trustworthy. When bought, he stayed bought-and no one aside from Melles himself knew that he was anything other than a peculiar
affectation.

It was expected that someone of Melles' status patronize the arts in
some way, and a poet was the cheapest and least intrusive sort of artist to have on one's staff. "I have a rather extensive job for you," he continued. "I hope you aren't preoccupied." The man smiled urbanely and crossed his legs with conscious elegance. He was something of a dandy and rather fancied himself as a popular man with the ladies. His salary from Melles enabled him to cut quite a figure of sartorial splendor among not only his peers but also his superiors.

"What do you need my skills for? As a repairer of reputation? I've been planning what to do for you since the moment the rumors began to fly." He shook his head, and then waggled his finger in mock-admonition. "My dear patron, you have been very injudicious. This could ruin you yet, if it isn't carefully handled."

Melles did not make the retort he felt hovering on his tongue. The man
was worth his weight in gold, and was arrogant enough to be quite aware
of it. Instead, he got right to the point. "It isn't the Court I'm
worried about; they're ineffectual enough, and like sheep, they'll
follow anyone with the right bell around his neck. No, it's the Army
that's giving me trouble." He leaned forward over his desk, to emphasize how serious he felt the situation was. "They've decided they don't care for the idea of someone with my ethics on the Iron Throne." 

The poet pursed his lips. "That could be troublesome. I don't know quite how to handle the Army-unless you already know what you want to say?"

"I do. Believe it or not, I want you to report the exact truth." Melles smiled thinly at the poet's surprise. "We're going to concentrate on the plight of my old rival, Tremane," he continued lightly. "I want you to spread the story of how he and his command were abandoned out beyond the farthest reach of the Empire. Be creative; go on about the horror of being sent off to die in utterly unknown lands. Find the right words to convince people that I had nothing to do with the abandonment of Tremane and his men in Hardorn. Then convince them that I had no idea that I would be Charliss' next choice for his successor. Say that I feel that the times are so radically changed that I have changed with them. Say I personally am so busy trying to keep the Empire together that I have no interest in pursuing my old vendetta against Tremane himself." That last could get him in a certain amount of difficulty with the Emperor if Charliss got wind of it, but he was willing to take that particular chance.

The poet pursed his lips in thought. "It's a novel approach," he
admitted. "And it just might distract soldiers from the stories of dead
bodies in baby cribs. After all, you didn't actually kill the baby, you
only dumped the body of an assassin there. Whereas Tremane and his men were abandoned in Hardorn; that's without a doubt and with no particular reason to leave them out there."

"That's exactly what I'm looking for," Melles encouraged. "And soldiers have more in common with other soldiers than with brats in cribs. They will have empathy for Tremane's forces. Why weren't they called back while it was still possible to construct Portals that worked between the Storms? Don't place any blame yet, but raise as many questions in peoples' minds as you can, particularly in the Army."

"I can do that," the poet said decisively, losing a great deal of his
languid pose as his own imagination set to work. "I'm very good at
questions. What about answers?"

"I'll give you more to work on when I have facts," Melles promised.
"For right now, this will be enough. Get people talking, get their minds on something else besides my little jokes." He signaled that the man could go.

"Gossip and rumor, opiates of the dull, can for the clever be the stuff
that dream are made of," the poet said sardonically, as he smiled,
standing up as gracefully as he had sat down.

"My dreams, at any rate," Melles chuckled, watching the man's elegant
way of walking-elegant, but not at all effeminate. It was rather like a wolf at the stalk, and he made up his mind to copy it.

The first of his seekers came back within hours with an accurate account of the Army pay records. As he had suspected, since every district governor was individually responsible for seeing to it that the units within his jurisdiction actually were paid (even though the pay actually came out of the military budget), there were several instances where pay was in arrears, sometimes significantly. As he went over the figures with his own accountant, the secretary he had sent to interview the Imperial Exchequer also returned.

That gave him his first move in the new game.

He waited until the next day, then descended on the major figures of the Imperial Civil Service, trailing a string of clerks all bearing stacks of paper. With great fanfare and a fine speech written by his pet poet, he "revealed" the terrible injustice that had been done to the loyal soldiers of the Empire.

"But it is not your fault, he continued, before anyone could get angry
at having yet more work heaped on him. "You are doing the best you can
in terrible circumstances!" He went on at some length, praising the
overworked clerks for sticking at their jobs even when they had to wade
through blizzards to get to their desks, shiver in the drafts when they
arrived, and fight worse weather to go to a cold home with short rations once they returned at the end of a long day's work. "I have brought you the help of my own clerks to see you through this crisis," he said, as his men took over empty desks or any other flat space with a chair. "I am sure you do not want our brave soldiers to suffer, but I do not want you to suffer either!" With that, he set off a frenzy of paper pushing to get every soldier's records and pay up to date. Some of the pay had to be made in goods rather than coin, but he made certain that the clerks arranged it so the goods in question were more valuable on the gray market than the actual pay they were substituting for.

It was all taken care of in a single morning; not too difficult, when he doubled the existing workforce and had all of them concentrate on the one task, putting all other work temporarily aside. He then formally went to the Commanders and promised to personally make up for the other deficiencies that had cropped up, usually in the way of resupply. He made a great show of embarrassment, as if he had only now discovered these problems. He didn't know if anyone believed him, but he made a point of assigning his own people to make certain that existing problems were corrected and further ones reported to him so that he could see that they were dealt with.

As he had hoped, although there was some suspicion that he was trying to buy the Army's favor, he began to get some grudging acceptance. This was especially true once the stones began to circulate of how he had
uncovered all these problems personally.

Then his poet went to work, sending out his insidious little stories and questions, making the ordinary Imperial soldier wonder just what
"supposed mistake" could have left Tremane's people out in the cold, so
to speak. An added bonus came when he got word back that the rank-and-file had a few other, unanticipated questions. Such as a question of whether the late pay was really just bureaucratic bungling, or if Certain Parties had ordered the pay held back as a form of punishment.

After all, if Grand Duke Tremane and all his men could be abandoned,
what was a little delay in paying out wages?

But the crowning touch to the entire plan finally went into effect when
Melles' clerks found that correspondence between Charliss and Tremane.
And he could not have manufactured a better final letter than the one
that arrived for the Emperor's personal perusal just before the Portals
went down and stayed down.

It was bad enough that Tremane had begged, over and over again, for
critical supplies that were never sent, for more men, and especially for more mages. But it was the final letter that made Melles positively
gleeful both from the standpoint of seeing his old enemy brought low,
and for the strength of the ammunition it gave him.

For in that letter, which was accompanied by strategic maps, Tremane
begged the Emperor to allow his men to retreat, vowing that he himself
would remain behind and attempt to hold what had been taken with a corps of volunteers.

He pleaded with the Emperor not to visit punishment upon men who had
done nothing to deserve it, and to permit them to escape while it was
still possible to hold Portals to the Empire open long enough for them
to pass through.

And although Melles himself was no strategist, it was painfully obvious
from the maps that Tremane's position was utterly untenable. No one, not even a military genius, could have saved the situation.

In a handwritten directive, the Emperor ordered his secretaries to make
no response to this desperate plea, on the grounds that Tremane would
have to solve the situation in order to prove his worth, thus condemning Tremane's forces I with him. At that point, the best outcome for them was exile-and the worst was massacre.

He took that letter with the note in the margin to General Thayer, who
in turn leaked the information to his own Commanders, who sent it on
down the line. He managed to conceal his triumph in a show of distress
so perfect he even fooled Thayer.

By this time the Army was outraged. The Emperor had betrayed them,
betrayed the sacred bond that was supposed to bind the Emperor and the
men who served him. The rumors of Melles the "baby killer" were
forgotten in this new, and far more personal outrage, and even the
lowest private began to recall how it was Melles who saw that the pay
was put right, and Melles who made sure the supply wagons got through. Melles, and not the Emperor. And in that moment, he had them.

That was the point where he got an odd invitation from General Thayer;
an invitation to dinner, but not in the Palace. This was to be a private dinner, in an upper room of a very well-known and luxurious inn usually frequented by wealthy bachelors who didn't care to keep staff or cooks.

There were just a few things "wrong" with this invitation-the most
obvious being that Melles was not and had never been part of the social
circle that made use of this particular facility. The inn itself was
suffering some of the privations of every other eatery; the fare now was far from the former standards, and in fact was inferior to anything he could get in Crag Castle. And it was halfway across the city; the
magestorms struck twice a day now, with the result that the weather was
utterly unpredictable, and there were often "things" prowling the
streets, animals and even humans changed by the Storms into misshapen
creatures that bore little resemblance to what they had been. The
once-rats were bad enough, but the other creatures required that one
travel with an escort of heavily-armed men after dark.

He turned the invitation over and over in his hands, considering it. It
could be a trap, of course, designed to get him where he would be
vulnerable and eliminate him. But somehow, he didn't think so. To meet
in a public tavern in so remote a place suggested a need for secrecy.
The private salons of these large inns had separate, outside entrances,
so that people could come and go without being seen. This had the
earmarks of a conspiracy.

I had better go. If anyone is going to make an attempt on the
Emperor-assuming that is why they want me-I had better be in a position
to advise them.

It wasn't the best plan, but it was better than allowing them to make an attempt that would fail, and would alarm Charliss.

The Emperor was already unstable, and it wouldn't take a great deal to
set him off on a campaign to purge the Court.

And if necessary, I can always turn them in myself, proving my loyalty
to Charliss. That would be the court of last resort, however, if he
could not persuade them to hold off until he was ready. Betraying them
to Charliss would cost him so much difficulty once he was Emperor that
such a move was not advisable unless there was no other possible course
of action.

There was the possibility that this invitation was the setup for an
assassination attempt on him, but he didn't think that they would be
that stupid. An assassin himself, as they well knew, he would be a very
difficult man to take down. Granted, a large number of men could
overpower him, but as he had already proved, he was, despite all
appearances, still perfectly capable of defending himself and killing or maiming several of them before they managed to kill him. Such an affair would be noisy and leave many witnesses who would have to be silenced or eliminated. He would have his own men with him, who would also have to be silenced or eliminated, and those men would have the superiors they reported to and families of their own who would miss them. It would turn into a nightmare of murder, and be impossible to cover up. They had to be aware of all of that.

With great reluctance, he called his valet and ordered clothing for the
cold, arranged an armed Imperial escort to take care of the hobgoblins,
alerted his personal bodyguard, and ordered a carriage-on-runners;
nothing else could handle the icy streets now. People had to step up
from their doorsteps to the street instead of down, for there was
rock-hard, packed snow to the depth of the knee on most of the streets,
snow that would not be gone until spring.

He was just glad that he had invested every bit of his magecraft in
shielding; mages who had not done so were in a state of near-collapse
every time a Storm passed through. He barely noticed; he got a headache
just before each Storm, a bit of disorientation during it, and a touch
of nausea afterward.

Nothing was bad enough to even interrupt his reading. But another Storm
was due about the time he expected to be on the street, and anyone who
was likely to be severely affected by the Storms could find himself in
deadly danger in a situation of that nature. A person walking alone
could collapse and freeze to death, he could be set upon and robbed, and a person riding in a conveyance could still freeze to death without his escort noticing.

He wondered how many marginally-Talented mages had been caught and hurt
or killed that way. If so, that simply cuts down on the number of idiots with mage-power, he reflected, as he pulled on a second set of gloves over his first set, and worked his feet into heavy sheepskin-lined boots. It was difficult to be both dressed for warmth and for elegance, and he opted, at least in his outermost garments, for the first.

The journey to the inn was something of an unpleasant ordeal, and he
wondered at the number of people who still continued to make their daily trips from home to place of employment, went out shopping, or indeed, did anything that took them out of doors. The weather was hideous, as it was more often than not now. There was the usual blizzard blowing, driving snow deep into the fabric of one's clothing, making it impossible to see the linkmen bearing lanterns who lit the way for the driver, if they got more than a few paces ahead of the carriage. And yet there were other people out on the street, including some women, which amazed him. His escort changed places regularly, so that some rode while others walked.

When they were about a third of the way to his destination, a pack of
hobgoblins attacked-hairy things that scrabbled through the snow on all
fours, drooling and howling with hunger, their ribs clearly prominent
even through their heavy brindled coats of fur. This time, it appeared
that they were Changedogs, rather than Changechildren, which made it a
bit easier on the escort; the men had a difficult time killing things
that cried like babies and had human eyes or faces. It wasn't too
difficult to beat the pack back, leaving a few bleeding, furcovered
bodies in the snow. So far, Changed creatures were routinely less
intelligent than the creatures they had been changed from, and
Changedogs were probably the most stupid of them all; they kept charging straight ahead even when that tactic clearly did not work. The exception was Changerats, which were more cunning and vicious, and swarmed in packs of several hundred. There were laws about Changed animals and people now; if your pet or relative was Changed, the only way to keep it (or him) was to take it to an Imperial examiner who would verify that it was no danger to humans or livestock.

There were few Changechildren being kept and sheltered by relatives.
Most were actually killed by their own families the moment they Changed, for the horror stories circulating about the bloodbaths some of the Changed had wrought in their own households did not encourage
compassion. A few who found themselves Changed had killed themselves.

Most of the Changechildren who roamed the streets as hobgoblins had come from the streets-were beggars, thieves, and other street people who had no relatives to eliminate them and no interest in anything other than survival.

The rest of the journey was spent nervously watching for another pack of attackers. When they finally did arrive at the inn, it was fully dark, and in the interest of keeping his employees satisfied enough to keep their mouths shut, he distributed a generous purse among them so that they could entertain themselves in fine style in the common room while he met with Thayer and Thayer's guests in the private room above.

His men entered the common room at the side entrance; he entered the
main entrance, stepping out of the screaming wind and snow into a
sheltering foyer, softly lit and blessedly warm and attended by a
discreet footman. Music played faintly somewhere; a full consort of wind and string instruments.

The footman directed him up a staircase to the right to another foyer,
this time attended by one of Thayer's personal servants, who took his
snow-caked outer clothing and directed him inside the door behind him.

He was not at all surprised to see that besides Thayer, virtually every
other important military leader in the area of the capital was there
already, waiting, with an excellent supper as yet untouched) set up on a sideboard. All eyes were on him as he entered, and the murmur of talk
that had been going on stopped for a moment, then resumed.

He took his place beside Thayer, was introduced to those he did not know personally, and Thayer's servants proceeded to serve all of the guests. He watched them carefully, and noted that they only served him food from dishes that everyone shared, and only after stirring up the contents within his sight, so that there could be no "special" little spot that had been prepared for him with poison. He kept his approving smile to himself, and pretended not to notice. Dinner conversation was not precisely light, since a great deal of it had to do with the roving
packs of hobgoblins and suggested means of eradicating them, but it had
nothing whatsoever to do with politics. There was another peculiarity of Thayer's servants; they never handled knives themselves, deferring to Thayer for carving of meat, and they were unarmed. As for Thayer's
guests, they were conspicuously unarmed. Everything that could have been done to reassure a professional killer that he was safe among them had been done.

So. It wasn't to be an assassination attempt after all. That meant it
was a conspiracy.

And the moment that the meal was over, the dishes cleared away, the wine poured and more left in decanters on the table, and the servants sent off, the conspiracy was revealed.

They wanted to be rid of Charliss before he did any more damage, and
they were perfectly willing to send him on to Godhood a little sooner.

He listened to them with great patience, making no comments, only
nodding occasionally when they seemed to require it. They were
understandably angry at many of the things that had been going on, and
his revelations concerning Tremane had essentially been the trigger for
all their pent-up frustrations. They were quite prepared to eliminate
the Emperor them selves, and had a good, solid plan for doing so. He
told them as much, and commended them for having a plan that took care
of almost every aspect of the situation.

"Almost," he repeated with emphasis. "But I would be remiss if I did not point out the major flaw in your plan. And I do not blame you gentlemen for not considering the aspect I have in mind."

"Which is what, exactly?" asked General Thayer, who was acting as the
primary spokesman.

"Magic." He held up a hand to forestall any objections. "I know that,
given how your own mages are acting with the increasing severity and
frequency of the mage-storms, that mages seem an insignificant aspect to you. Please believe me; they are not. You have determined that the spells binding the Imperial Guard to Charliss are broken and have not been replaced; that is good news, but those are not the only magics you need to worry about. Charliss himself is a powerful mage, and his power is augmented by an entire corps of lesser mages whose minds have been his for many years. They spend themselves to ensure his continued prosperity, and that is what you are not seeing in dealing with your own mages who would do no such thing. Surely you gentlemen recall seeing Charliss' mages before-that group of rather blank-eyed individuals who trail about after him like so many adoring, mindless maidens trailing about after a handsome warrior?" He looked around the table, and saw to his satisfaction that although there was disappointment in their faces, there was reluctant agreement there as well, and nods all around.

"At the moment, Charliss is only moderately inconvenienced by the
Storms, as opposed to the vast majority of mages, who are prostrated by
them." He steepled his fingers together thoughtfully, and considered his next words. "As a mage myself, let me explain to you, if I may, the true effect the Storms are having on mages-and that is primarily in our
choice of actions. The choice for a mage at the moment is simple: Preserve all of your own power for shields, or work other magics and
have each Storm that passes send you to your bed for hours recovering."
He saw more nods, as the Generals recognized the effects he had just
described. "Because Charliss is using the power from his corps of mages, he can shield and work other magics, and not suffer. That is what makes him dangerous, still. You might well get past his guards, even past his personal bodyguards; you might get past the protections put in by his personal mages, but by then he will be alerted and you will never get an assassin past his own defenses." There were still a few of the generals who were not convinced; Melles saw it in their closed expressions.

"There is one more factor to be considered here, and that is what would
happen afterward," he continued. "The old man still retains the loyalty
of too many people-including most of the truly powerful mages of the
Empire-who consider me to be an upstart. As it happens, most of them
favored Tremane, who was a personal favorite of the mages who taught
him, many of whom are now quite influential. I do not know if the truth
of what happened to poor Tremane would turn their opinion against the
Emperor, but if you remove him now, you will not give that truth a
chance to work in their minds." Now he had all of them; the last of the
skeptical looks was gone, replaced with resignation.

"Please wait," he said, at his most persuasive. "The Emperor has made no attempt to say or do anything about the truths that are spreading about his treatment of Tremane. I suspect this is because he is living in a very narrow world of reasoning at the moment. He wants revenge on
Tremane for 'betraying' the Empire, and he may believe that people
assume he cut Tremane off after that 'betrayal' rather than before. The
Hundred Little Gods know that by now he may even believe that himself!"
A couple of the oldest of the Generals pursed their lips and looked just a touch regretful; some of the youngest only looked smug. Both
expressions were probably prompted by the same thought-how far the
Emperor has fallen! The old were thinking that Charliss' mental
deterioration could easily be something they would experience if they
were unlucky; the young were thinking only that it was terrible for
someone that old, in that state, to still be in power.

Melles continued, seeing that he was bringing them to the line of
thought he wanted them to follow. "Charliss looks physically worse with
every day that passes. He may die soon on his own; his life is sustained by magic, and that is eroding no matter how desperately he shores it up. Let things take their natural course." He allowed himself a small, modest smile. "After all, I am the one who is really holding the reins now; Charliss is too busy concentrating on survival. Waiting will harm nothing in the long run. With time, I may be able to persuade those same mages that Charliss is using them with no regard for the cost to them, and no regard for the real enemy we face-the Storms."

Thayer looked around the table, and seemed to take some kind of unspoken consensus from his colleagues. "Very well," he said. "We will hold our hands. We agree that the real danger to the Empire is the mage-storms and the continuing refusal of the Emperor to adequately deal with them. You must see what you can do to convince the mages that Charliss is no longer capable of dealing with the true priorities of this situation."

He sat back in his chair and nodded. This was exactly how he wanted
everything to fall out, and he relished the moment even as he relished a single sip of wine. If he were to prosper as Emperor, the Empire itself must survive and prosper; in order for that to happen, he must redirect the energies and attention of the Empire on the Storms and their effects. Just now, the energies and attentions of the Empire were
seriously divided between one selfish old man who had outlived his
usefulness, and the struggles to survive through worsening conditions.
Either Charliss must go, or the Empire, for only one would survive
through the Storms.

"I will deal with the mages, and believe me, we must have them, he said. "Remember, Tremane is our key. Even as the Army realized that Charliss had betrayed and abandoned one of their own, I believe that with time, I can persuade the mages of the same."

"Good." Thayer held out his hand. "Strange times make for strange
allies, but sometimes those are the best. The Army is with you."

"And I," Melles pledged, with no sense of irony, "am with you as well. It is a pity that poor Tremane did not have as many firm allies."

Elspeth had just finished describing the latest results from the group
in the Tower, as relayed from Rolan to Gwena, when Tremane's face
suddenly went white. "Gods," Tremane said through gritted teeth. "Here
comes another one." He meant another mage-storm; he felt them first, as
they traveled over the face of Hardorn. They made him tremble all over,
churned his stomach, and muddled his head. But that gave Elspeth,
Darkwind, and Tashiketh time to brace themselves before the onset of the Storm hit them as well. At the moment, the effects were still not too bad, although every mage endured some unpleasant physical symptoms in direct proportion to how powerful he or she was. But the circles of
changed soil had already begun to appear again, and it could not be too
much longer before the weather shifted back to the terrible blizzards
that had ravaged the countryside, and before more "boggles" appeared as
living creatures were changed by wild magic. They were just glad they
had the formula to predict where those circles would appear.

Elspeth grasped the arms of her chair and clenched her own jaw; it
didn't help, it never did, but at least it gave her something to do
while the Storm rolled over her. Meanwhile, Father Janas watched them
all with worried, wondering eyes, for he was no mage, and felt nothing
when the Storms came.

This was a short, intense Storm. When it was over, she let out the
breath she had been holding, let go of the arms of the chair, and put
her head down on her folded arms on the table.

"Oh, I do not like that," Tashiketh sighed. "I do not know how you bear
it."

"You bear what you must," Darkwind replied philosophically." And there
are worse things to contemplate than having one's lunch jump about in
one's stomach."

"And that brings us back to the topic we were discussing," Tremane said, his clenched hands slowly loosening as color returned to his face. "I do not wish to cast aspersions upon the ability of your friends, Lady Elspeth, but I feel we must assume that the party in the Tower will not find a solution to the Final Storm. My concern is and must be for this land and these people; how am I to protect them? is there any way that I can take in the damage myself, instead of having it come upon the land? Can I use earth-magic and the earth-binding to instruct the land to heal itself and to prevent the creatures here from being twisted out of all recognition? Have you any ideas at all?" 

Father Janas shook his head. "You could take the ills of the land upon yourself, my son, but not for long before it killed you. You cannot bear what the land could and live."

"We don't have any ideas yet, but we have several kinds of magic that we can incorporate," Elspeth mused aloud. "Tremane, I don't think the damage to the land is going to be that terrible, but what I am afraid of is that the nodes are going to-go to a critical point where they cannot be controlled. That they are going to become rogue. I'm very much afraid that the Final Storm is going to turn them into something like the rogue Heartstone that Darkwind and I dealt with."

"That is my concern also," Tashiketh agreed. "I fear that is precisely
what may occur, and such a thing would be very like having a continual
Storm in one place. As power fed into it, it would continue to grow.
This would be a very bad thing."

"Shelters, shields," Darkwind muttered, frowning and glaring at nothing. "The trouble with such things is that they are going to fail; I don't know how we could possibly make them strong enough to survive what is coming." Elspeth got up and paced restlessly beside the windows.

The weather in Hardorn had deteriorated again, but it was not yet as
foul as it had been before the last protection went into place. They
were currently between snowstorms, and the sun shone down with empty
benevolence on the dazzling fresh snow. Elspeth was not looking forward
to the resumption of blizzards, but at least the increase in the number
of snowstorms was keeping the number of curiosity seekers down.

Virtually everyone who could come in himself to pledge to Tremane had,
and a few days ago, their old friend Father Janas appeared with another
casket of earth, collected from all of those who wished to pledge
themselves and their land to their new King and could not come in
person. Now Tremane "felt" virtually every part of his realm, which was
both an advantage and a disadvantage. He knew where every trouble spot
was, and when a Storm began its march across the face of Hardorn,
Elspeth was personally quite glad that it was Tremane who experienced
the sickness of his land, and not her.

But now the system of signal-towers was fully functional again, and at
least warning could be sent out when something did go wrong out in the
hinterlands. The precise locations of where the circles of altered land
would fall were sent out well in advance of the Storms by means of the
towers. If things were not precisely under control, at least they were
in a better state than they had been. There was one authority in Hardorn again, and resources were not being wasted on warfare. A few skirmishes with Tashiketh's gryphons had put an end to further fighting.

There was still the pressing problem of how to protect the nodes and the Tayledras Heartstones. She was all too conscious of the Heartstone right under the Palace at Haven; if that went rogue, it could very well
destroy the Palace, all the Collegia, and perhaps a good section of
Haven as well. The loss of life would be horrendous. The Palace complex
had been partially evacuated, but with mixed results and quite a bit of
ongoing confusion. She had seen enough magical destruction in the
capital of Hardorn; she had no trouble envisioning the same level of
destruction visited on her own home.

She started to shake, just thinking about it, and turned her gaze to
look out the window for a moment so that no one in the room would see
her face and the expression she wore. As so often happened these days,
her timing was just right. She was the first to see and recognize the
latest arrival to Tremane's court.

The procession was just entering the courtyard as she glanced down at
the gates, and the glitter of the sun on shining metal and blinding gold and white trappings caught her eye first. Then she saw the standard, and who rode beneath it, and she gasped, catching the attention of everyone else.

"Oh, gods-" she said, feeling as if she had just been struck a numbing
blow to the head and had not yet felt the pain. She wondered wildly for
a moment if she was hallucinating; there was no way that she should be
seeing what she saw out the window. "Oh, ye gods, this cannot be
happening! This is too strange even for me."

"Elspeth?" Darkwind said, catching the timbre of her voice without
knowing what caused it. "Ashke, what's wrong?" The chair legs grated on
the wooden floor as he hastily shoved his seat back. He got up and
hurried to her side; unable to speak, she simply pointed out the window.

His eyes widened, and he choked, completely unable to get even a word of exclamation out.

"King Tremane," Elspeth managed to say as Darkwind was struck dumb, "You have a very important visitor, and I think you had better get down to the courtyard now."

"Why?" he asked, a little resentfully, for he had gotten rather tired of meeting so many delegations in the cold over the past several weeks.

"You should just-do what she says," Darkwind managed to croak.

Tremane looked skeptical. His tone took on an edge of sarcasm." Who's
here? The Emperor?"

"No," Elspeth replied. "Solaris, High Priest of Vkandis and Son of the
Sun and her entourage." She glanced down again. "And the Firecat Hansa," she added.

Behind her, there was a muffled curse, and the sound of a chair
clattering against the floor as it fell over, and by the time she had
turned to see what Tremane was doing" he was already gone.

"We'd better go down there, too," Darkwind finally managed to get out.
"We should be there to welcome her." She nodded, and gestured to the
fascinated gryphon to accompany them.

By the time they reached the courtyard, however, Tremane had already
given Solaris as respectful a welcome as anyone could have wished, even
the Son of the Sun and the Mouth of Vkandis, given that she had arrived
with no warning. And she in her turn had remained polite, which was all
that Elspeth could have hoped for, given the circumstances.

"I have been traveling for many days at the express orders of Sunlord
Vkandis," Solaris was saying, as Elspeth got within earshot. "It was, I
believe, at precisely the moment when you were bound to the land of
Hardorn that-" Then she caught sight of Tashiketh-who had reared up on
his hind legs and was holding his foreclaws extended in a peculiar
manner that was obviously a ritual salute. And Solaris stared at the
gryphon with a look of shock and complete disbelief on her face, her
hands automatically moving to form a similar salute.

That's odd; she's seen gryphons before. So why is she looking at
Tashiketh as if he were some new kind of creature?

As she stared at him in complete disbelief, Tashiketh intoned something
in that odd gabble that Elspeth thought sounded like Karsite. Evidently, so did Solaris, who blinked and stammered something back. It was the very first time that Elspeth had ever seen the Son of the Sun taken aback by anything.

"Evidently Vkandis has a streak of the practical joker in Him after all," Darkwind commented with a touch of amusement. "Otherwise, He would have warned her." Perhaps this is meant to be an object lesson. That just because she is the Mouth of Vkandis, she doesn't necessarily know everything about the Sunlord," Elspeth answered.

Tashiketh replied, and Solaris responded. Evidently they were going
through a set series of greetings and responses. Finally the little
ritual came to a close; Tashiketh dropped back down to all fours again,
and made a very courtly bow.

She looked from Tremane to Tashiketh and back again.

"How long, sir, have you had this gentleman at your Court?" she asked
very carefully.

"Since a few days after I was bound to the earth," Tremane replied.
"Tashiketh informed us that he and his entourage were sent because of
that particular event."

"As was I," Solaris murmured, still staring at Tashiketh.

"And now I know why I was sent here, rather than being told to send
representatives as I did to Valdemar." I have the feeling that it wasn't just to consult with Tremane," Darkwind said wryly. "Now she knows that her God has been sharing his attentions. This could be rather amusing." The Firecat Hansa, who was sitting very patiently on the front of Solaris' saddle, reached out and patted her on the shoulder with his paw. "We are about to have a blizzard descend, Sunborn," he said politely. "If you would all be so kind, good people, it would be best if we could move inside." As with his compatriot Altra, Hansa could apparently make himself "heard" in Mindspeech even to those who did not share that Gift. Elspeth saw startled looks all over the courtyard, as even Tremane's guards experienced someone talking inside their minds for the first time in their lives.

"I beg your pardon, Sir Hansa, of course we can," Tremane said
instantly, and with commendable aplomb. "Allow me to conduct you to
appropriate quarters myself." At that moment, to confirm Hansa's
prediction, the warning horns blew from the walls, signaling that a
physical storm was moving in quickly from the west.

And Tremane did escort them, probably thanking his Hundred Little Gods
that he had set up one of the towers as guest quarters for important
folk and their followers. The last set of guests had just vacated the
premises; the tower was clean and waiting for the next set. It was a
matter of moments to take them there, turning over the entire tower to
Solaris and her relatively small entourage. Although Darkwind excused
himself, Elspeth went along as the official representative of Selenay,
and because she was anxious to talk to Solaris if she could. Solaris'
escort consisted of a few very professional and tough-looking guards,
and several Sun-priests. Just as the last of their baggage came up from
below, the blizzard Hansa had warned was coming did indeed descend, and
Tremane took his leave of them to see that the usual precautions were in place.

The moment he left, Solaris dropped some of her detached and "official"
manner. Looking at Elspeth and Tashiketh, she raised an eyebrow in an
inquiring manner. "Would you care to remain while my people get us
settled in? I should be glad of the company; it has been a stressful
trip."

"I think we would both be pleased to remain, Holiness," Elspeth said
carefully, and Solaris laughed, tossing her cloak aside and removing the heavy gold collar she was wearing. A robed attendant took both and
carried them away.

"Just 'Solaris' little sister," the High Priest replied. "There are few
enough who can call me by that name, and you are certainly one who has
that right." She removed a few more pieces of regalia and set them
aside, then sank down in the chair nearest the fire while the wind shook the walls. Hansa immediately leaped into her lap and settled there. "Do take a seat, Elspeth," Solaris continued. "Sunborn Tashiketh, I am not certain what to offer you."

"The floor will do, Most Holy," the gryphon said with careful courtesy,
and settled himself there as Elspeth chose another chair. "I hope you
will forgive me, but how is it that you did not know that Vykaendys
was-"

"Was watching over both our lands? I suspect it is partly because that
knowledge was lost while corrupt Priests held the Sun Throne. As to why
Vkandis did not choose to reveal this fact to me until now-" She spread
her hands wide. "The God moves in His own way, and in His own time.
Presumably He had a reason for sending me here to be hit over the head
with this revelation."

"I suspect that He sent you here for more than that reason, Most Holy,"
Tashiketh replied respectfully.

"If you are here, who is holding the Sun Throne?" Elspeth blurted,
unable to restrain her curiosity. "I thought you couldn't leave for any
length of time, that there were still those you did not entirely trust."

"Oh, that is a tale in itself, and some day I will tell you all of it,
but in short, I am here because Vkandis Himself sits on the Sun Throne
at this very moment," Solaris said. As Elspeth started with surprise,
Solaris nodded. "I mean that quite literally.

It is the second great Miracle of my reign; the great statue of Vkandis
came to life again during a Holy Service over which I was presiding,
then ordered us all to follow and walked out of the Temple, shrinking as He moved, until He reached the throne room, where He took the throne." Solaris spoke so matter-of-factly that she might have been discussing the terrible blizzard outside rather than something that was, quite clearly, a miracle in every sense of the word.

Elspeth was as fascinated by her attitude as by what had happened.

She saw no reason to doubt anything that Solaris told her for Solaris
would not have left Karse without a compelling reason and an unshakable
guarantee that her Throne would be waiting for her when she returned.

"When He had seated Himself, He let it be known that I was traveling
into Hardorn on a life-or-death mission at His behest, and that in token of the fact that I was His true-born Son, He would be holding the Sun Throne until I returned," she continued. "He swore His protection to Karse against the Storms. At that point, the statue became a statue
again except, of course, it was literally rooted to the Sun Throne. It
wasn't an illusion either; the great statue is quite gone from the
pedestal, and the smaller version in place on the Throne. And in addition, there is a peculiar barrier around Karse itself. People can come and go through it, but it is quite visible, and it seems to resemble the barrier around Iftel that Karal described to me." She smiled a bit wryly. "Now it seems clear why it resembles that barrier. The Sunlord has had practice." Solaris might seem to be matter-of-fact, but as Elspeth listened and watched, she realized that Solaris was profoundly moved and awed. Elspeth found this a great deal easier to understand; how could anyone not feel awe at such an occurrence?

"I doubt that anyone will have the temerity to claim your place, given
that particular demonstration," Tashiketh said dryly. "'And so Vykaendys directed you here?"

"Precisely, and it was not the easiest journey I have ever undertaken,
though not the worst either. Our robes earned us respect and safe
passage, though no one really recognized us as Sun-priests." One corner
of her mouth twitched. "I will admit it came as something of a shock to
learn that Tremane had been Bound to Hardorn. That puts him on an equal
basis with me, in some ways, and it was not what I would have expected
to see happen. Still, it is probably good for Hardorn." She laughed
softly. "I also have a confession that I might as well make to you both. I am taking a certain amount of sadistic pleasure in this. He is going to suffer physical discomfort, even terrible pain from time to time, he agreed to this, he even volunteered for it, and I think that between this and his geas of Truth-speaking, he just might be able to atone for his actions in the past."

"He spoke to me in private of what he had done, sending the assassin,"
Tashiketh admitted. "I believe he regrets his actions more with every
passing day."

"Well, he should," Solaris said firmly. "I cannot even begin to describe the anguish he caused, not only to myself and Karal, but to those who knew and cared for all of his victims. But although I am not prepared to forgive him yet, I am willing and ready to work with him. I am an Adept of a peculiar bent, as I suspect you have guessed. I think we may be able yet to find ways to protect ourselves through this crisis."

"I hope so," Elspeth said fervently. "I hope so."

"With Vykaendys' help," Tashiketh replied with absolute certainty, "we
shall."

Firecats had a real cat's ability to make a person feel as if she was a particularly stupid student and the cat was a teacher fast losing patience. "Vkandis' protection is temporary," Hansa said firmly, looking for all the world precisely like the Cat statue at the feet of Henricht, the first Son of the Sun. Poor Henricht, even as a statue, looked singularly unprepossessing; the Cat, however, looked as if he should have been sitting on the Sun Throne. "It cannot last through the Final Storm. The nodes in Karse are as vulnerable as any. The protection is only meant to prevent people and beasts from Changing, and to prevent the greater part of the priesthood from falling ill twice and thrice a day." He bent his head then, and washed a paw with great daintiness. "You and your priests will have to do your share like everyone else. If nodes go rogue, you will be dealing with the unfortunate results." Solaris sighed, but not with disappointment.
Elspeth thought that her sigh sounded more like someone who had just
heard unpleasant news she had nevertheless expected.

"Shields, Darkwind muttered, pacing, as Vree followed his movements with interest from his perch in the corner. "That has to be the key. But how do we create a shield that will hold through even the Storms we have now?" Elspeth pummeled her mind for something she remembered out of-a Chronicle? No, it was a story that Kerowyn had told about one of the mages her grandmother had trained.

"Why only one shield?" she asked. "Why not layered shields, shields
within shields? Kerowyn told me about something like that; the mage
layered lots of weaker shields instead of one strong one, and kept
replacing them from the inside as they were taken down from the outside. If you could do that, keep replacing the innermost shield every time the outermost was destroyed-"

"Interesting and yes, it has been done before, and quite successfully," 
Darkwind said, knitting his brows in thought. "Multiple shields are more effective than one strong shield. But we can't put a mage beside every node, and if we don't, how could we keep replacing shields as they came down? You can't shield from the outside once the initial shield is up, and how would we do it from the inside? That is the problem of course, and a spell--or series of spells-would have to be crafted for that."

"If we could. How would we continue to supply the energy to create the
shields in the first place?" Tremane objected.

Solaris gave him a withering look. "You would be sealing the perfect
energy source within the shield," she replied, with an unspoken "fool"
hanging off the end of the sentence. "That would be the least of our
problems. And if the energy were to be exhausted and all the shields
fail, well, an exhausted node would be no more dangerous than no node.
If there's no power to act upon, there will be nothing to go rogue."

"Apologies, but things work somewhat differently where I am from, and we did not handle magic wells that way," Tremane offered. Tremane did not take offense at her manner, perhaps because she was at least
participating in these experimental sessions and demonstrating that she
was not going to take out her animosity toward him on Hardorn and its
people in general. He grimaced as if he was getting a headache. "Then if we could simply find a way to keep a node spawning its own shields until the energy ran out-"

"This is all very nice in theory~" Elspeth pointed out impatiently." But even if we could do that, we haven't the time or the resources to run about the countryside slapping a shieldspell over every node!"

"Well, actually, we wouldn't have to do that, at least not here-" began
Tremane.

"There are Priests enough in Karse to shield every node there," said
Solaris at the same time.

"And that works for Hardorn and Karse." Elspeth frowned. "But what about Valdemar? And the Pelagirs? And elsewhere?"

"Hmm," Tashiketh rumbled, moving his gaze from Solaris to Tremane and back again. "There is an answer to that question already in our hands." Hansa and Father Janas switched their gazes between the two rulers also, as Solaris and Tremane exchanged a very peculiar look.

There was something rather odd going on there, and Elspeth hadn't a clue to what it was all about, but the tension between those two suddenly increased a hundredfold.

"I do not like you," Solaris burst out, as she abruptly got to her feet
and stood, glaring at Tremane. "I do not like you at all! Ever since you and your heathen army came here, you have stood for everything I find detestable-expediency above honor, craft above wisdom, guile above
truth, self-reliance above faith! I do not like you!" And with that, she gathered her robes about her and swirled out, Hansa padding in her wake. The heavy silence that followed her outburst made even their breathing seem loud.

"What in hell was that all about?" Elspeth asked, bewildered. She had never seen Solaris lose control like that before.

Tremane looked at the door that Solaris had closed-not slammed-behind
herself. "I'm not sure," he replied, "but it might have to do with a
solution that involves a personal compromise on the part of the Son of
the Sun." He appeared to make up his mind about something and stood up.
"If you four can work on the problem of a self-renewing shield-spell
that can take power from a node-source without the intervention of an
Adept, I will go and speak with Solaris, and see if my guess mirrors
actuality rather than just an outburst of frustration." He nodded at all of them, and left as well.

Darkwind snorted. "A self-renewing shield-spell that takes power from a
node without an Adept. At least he was only asking the impossible!" But
Elspeth wasn't so certain.

"Don't Tayledras Heartstones do self- renewing spells, like the Veil? And they don't need an Adept around to make them work." Darkwind started to object, then got a thoughtful look on his face. Tashiketh rested his beak on his foreclaws, looking expectant.

"They do," Darkwind replied slowly. "And I was about to say that nodes
aren't Heartstones, but Heartstones are a kind of node. Let me think
about this one for a moment."

Father Janas simply shrugged. "I haven't the least idea of what you're all talking about," he said cheerfully. "Tremane asked me to sit through this because I know how the earthbinding and earth-magic works. Other than that, my friends, I'm fairly useless. But it does seem to me that for your controlling factor, you could use earth-energy, the very slow and subtle energies that underlie everything, the ones even hedgewizards and earth-witches use. Those are fundamentally unaffected by the Storms." Tashiketh raised his head and nodded eagerly; Darkwind looked at Father Janas as if he had unwittingly uttered something profound.

Elspeth had come late to magic and thus undergone a forced-growth
process like a hothouse plant. She had never actually worked with such
primitive energies as Janas described.

But the theory seemed reasonable to her, and both Tashiketh and Father
Janas obviously were familiar in detail with how those magics operated.
"Well, why don't we just pursue that particular hare until we either
catch it or it goes to cover?" she asked decisively.

"It is these energies with which Vykaendys created the Shield-Wall,"
Tashiketh said thoughtfully. "This is why there is less magical energy
to spare within Iftel itself than there is in other lands. It is
constantly going to renew the Shield-Wall. If this works, there will be little energy to spare in any of the lands when the Final Storm has passed."

"And the alternative?" Elspeth replied. "I don't think any of us want to contemplate that. Most of us have been doing without a great deal of
magic ever since the Storms started, and I doubt that it is going to be
too much of a hardship."

"Except for the Vales," Darkwind sighed. "But as you said, the
alternative is a great deal less pleasant." He regarded the three of
them with an expression so mournful that it almost made Elspeth want to
laugh. "I will need your help in asking me very stupid questions, for we will somehow have to unravel the processes by which Tayledras make
Heartstones and link them into spells like the Veil. I am so used to
being able to do such things that I cannot tell you how I do them.
This," he concluded with resignation, "is going to be a very great deal
of difficult work, all of it mental." He was right; it was. They were
still only in the earliest stages when Solaris and Tremane returned, and Darkwind re marked via Mindspeech to Elspeth that since there were
neither knife wounds nor signs of violence on either of them, the talk
must have gone well. Neither of them said anything, and both of them
acted as if they did not particularly wish to discuss what had occurred.

The group was not able to get beyond the most basic of understandings
that day, nor for several more days, although they all worked feverishly to put together their solution. Only Tremane did not spend every waking hour of the day deep in research and testing; Solaris remarked cryptically that he didn't need to, since his presence was only necessary when they had a solution ready to try. Whatever had passed between them had cleared the air considerably, for Solaris had stopped making her acidic comments and was even distantly friendly to him at times.

Perhaps, not so ironically, it was the discipline and methodology they
had learned from Master Levy and the other Master Artificers that
enabled them to dissect magic logically, apply the laws they had
learned, and find the fundamentals that allowed the magic to work in the
first place. Finally, they had all the pieces of a solution; thanks to
Darkwind, they all knew how to make a node behave like a very weak
Heartstone and how to tie one into a self-sustaining spell. Unlike a
Tayledras Heartstone, nodes could only support one such spell, but one
was all they would need. They knew how to use earth-energy to power the
second spell that would control the first, triggering the spawning of a
new shield when the outermost collapsed.

Now came the question to which they had no answer, unless Solaris and
Tremane already knew it-how to reach every node at the same time.

Then, at last, Tremane rejoined the group.

"Earth-binding," he said succinctly. "Every Tayledras Vale will be able
to control the nodes in the territory of that Vale; Solaris will be able
to reach the nodes in Karse, the King in Rethwellan the nodes in his
land, and so forth. Those leaders will have to undergo the ritual, but
the gods know it's simple enough, and once they do, they can immediately
protect their nodes." Elspeth looked askance at him, but Father Janas
nodded. "I thought so," he said with satisfaction. "This is one of those
few times when the King can affect the land, rather than vice versa."

"I am not looking forward to this," Tremane added bitterly.

"When we take this to the next level and involve the entire country~ it
is going to be extremely unpleasant. But it isn't going to kill me, and
I would rather spend a week recovering from the aftereffects of this
than have my people face a single node gone rogue. So, let us test our
theory on the nearest node to Shonar, and if it works, we will then make
all of Hardorn into our second test." Something about his tone made
Elspeth think that the effects of the full-country test were going to be
something worse than merely "extremely unpleasant;" she had the feeling
that this was going to require every bit of courage Tremane possessed.

But there was nothing she could do about it, and she knew very well that
her mother would have willingly sacrificed herself in the same cause, as
would Solaris, or any other good ruler.

The test on the single node was far less difficult than Elspeth had
envisioned; first the controlling- spell was set in place, then the node
itself was altered to allow for the linkage of a shield-spell directly
to it. This was the part that only an Adept could do, so it was up to
Darkwind as the most practiced of all of them in this particular kind of
magic, while Solaris "watched" with single-minded intensity.

Then, when everything was in readiness, Darkwind triggered the spell,
just before the next Storm came through.

If Elspeth had not been "watching" at the time, she would never have
believed that it was possible, for between one moment and the next, the
node disappeared, and in its place was a shielded spot into which
ley-lines fed but nothing came out.

Then the Storm swept in, and they all waited out the effects.

When they had recovered and were able to "look" again, the node was
exactly as it had been before the Storm, shielded and safe.

Tremane looked very much like a man who has received both incredibly
good news and incredibly bad news at the same time. "Well, he said, "we
know it works."

"How soon do you want to try protecting all of Hardorn?" Father Janas
asked him gently.

"Now," he said decisively. "We have until late tonight before the next
Storm comes in, and I don't want to be able to sit and brood on this."

Solaris sat straight up and looked him in the eyes. "Tremane Gyfarr
Pendleson of Lynnai, don't you dare sit there and pretend to be a
martyr! What you are about to endure, I will also have to, and Prince
Daren of Valdemar, and Faramentha of Rethwellan, and whoever it is in
Iftel-"

"Vykaendys-First Bryron Hess," Tashiketh said helpfully.

"The Son of the Sun in Iftel, and a half-dozen Hawkbrothers and at least one Shin'a'in," Solaris concluded.

"Not to mention as many other leaders we can reach as we think will have lands in jeopardy," Hansa added helpfully. "There will be a great many leaders with dreadful headaches before this is all over."

"Exactly! You will not be alone in this, and although you may feel fear because of the justifiable guilt you bear for your other actions in the past, I can assure you that the land will not let you die!" She rose to her feet, full of anger and some other emotion that Elspeth could not put a name to. "If you are afraid, then be a man and admit it, and let us help you through it! You should know that if you are too afraid, the land will resist what we are about to do. We may not be able to overcome that resistance, for the land takes its cues from you."

"That's Solaris talking, but it's also something else," Darkwind said, in Mindspeech tightly focused and tense. "I wonder if Tremane realizes it?"

"Vkandis?" Elspeth asked, but even as she said it, she knew that it was
the wrong answer.

"Since when does a male use all of someone's names to scold him?"
Darkwind asked, a little of the tension ebbing.

"No, Solaris is acting as a Mouth for a different power, and I suspect
that if you asked Father Janas, he'd be very familiar with it. Probably
her annoyance with Tremane and her familiarity with being a Mouth opened her up to acting as an inadvertent channel for it." Elspeth sent silent agreement, after casting a quick glance at the priest, who was watching the little scene with a faint smile on his lips. Darkwind was right. Only a woman-a mother-would scold someone using every one of his names.

And wasn't the earth often referred to as Mother? Looked at in that
light, there were some subtle physical changes in Solaris that gave more clues. For one thing, she looked more-feminine than Elspeth had ever seen her.

The scolding did what it was supposed to do, which was annoy him enough
to make him willing to admit to a weakness; and in a way Elspeth could
feel very sorry for poor Tremane, who hadn't asked for any of this, and
had borne up very well under it all. He stiffened his back, looked up
into Solaris' eyes, and said, with quiet dignity, "You are right,
Solaris. I am terrified. I am accustomed to using power, not having it
use me, and the prospect of giving up control over myself to anything
gives me the horrors. Doing it with the lives of thou, sands of
innocents in the balance is terrible beyond my ability to articulate."

Whatever had Solaris let her go, and the anger faded as she sat down.
"It isn't so bad, being used by this kind of power," she said softly.
"You will be exhausted when it is over; perhaps a little ill, though I
don't think it will be very bad. I think the power will use you gently,
if you don't resist it. Sometimes giving up control in a greater cause
is the noblest thing one can do in one's life." She hesitated a moment
longer, then it looked as if some wall inside her gave way. Her
expression changed completely. "Perhaps you are rightfully afraid that
some of us, who have grievances with you, may not protect you with a
whole heart. You would have been correct in fearing that not very long
ago; I might not have moved to help you if I saw that you were in
danger." She took a deep breath and plunged on. "That is no longer true; I forgive you, Tremane of Hardorn, and if it is any more comfort to you, young Karal, who has greater cause to hate you than I, forgave you before I did. The man who loosed the assassin that murdered our friend was an Imperial Commander, subject to the orders and whims of an Emperor with no morals and no scruples, and you are no longer that man." Now she looked shamefaced for a moment. "The Sunlord himself told me that I must forgive you if we were to succeed, but until this moment, I could not."

Tremane looked at her with astonishment, and offered her his hand; she
took it in a firm handclasp that said far more than words could have.
"Thank you for that; I know what it cost you," was all he said.

Then he released her hand and looked at the others. "Well? Shall we begin?"

As far as Elspeth was concerned, there was very little for her to see or do, other than to feed mage-power to Darkwind, who in his turn did
things with it that she could neither see nor follow, although she knew
in theory what he was doing.

She was what they all called the "anchor" and she brought in the power,
directed, and refined it. Tremane searched for the node, and "held" them all there when he found one. Darkwind built the node into a matrix that would permit a single spell to be linked into it. Father Janas
constructed the controlling spell that triggered the main spell, using
the loss of a shield as the guide for activation. Solaris built the main spell, which created the nine nested shields using power from the node, and Darkwind linked it in. Then, once that node "disappeared" because it was now shielded, Tremane moved their viewpoint on to the next node. In the end, by the time they were done, Tremane was so completely exhausted that he could not even move, but as Solaris had promised, he was neither ill nor in pain. They had worked through him to reach every node in Hardorn and replicate the same shields and spells they had tried on the first node. This was the only way they could have reached all of the nodes without going to them physically; in a sense, since Tremane was bound to all of Hardorn in a very physical fashion because of the blood and soil he had ingested, they actually were working there physically.

They completed their work just as the next Storm came through, and had
the satisfaction of seeing their work hold.

And Tremane got a small reward out of it after all; since the nodes were no longer being battered by the energies of the Storm, he was suffering only about half of the physical effects he had been enduring with every Storm-wave. This made him feel half again better. "That in and of itself made this all worth while," he said weakly, but with a smile, and then they sent him off to bed.

"He feels as though he will sleep for a week, but it won't be more than
a day or so," Father Janas said with weary satisfaction." He'll be back
on his feet and hard at work shortly. Now do you need anything to alert
the peoples in your homes?"

"I will send two of my fastest flyers-mages both-back with the exact
instructions in the morning," Tashiketh rumbled, his eyes alight with
pleasure at their success. "And if you will permit me, Most Holy, more
will convey you and Hansa back to your own land to save you as much time as possible; as many of your escort as care to remain here can, I
suppose, and the rest can follow you at their own pace."

Solaris gave him a puzzled look. "I would appreciate it no end, but how do you intend to do this?" she asked. "I assume you mean me to fly with them, but I can't imagine how that could work properly."

"A basket, suspended between them. It is perfectly safe," Tashiketh
assured her. "There are some minor spells on the basket to make it and
the contents light; you can renew these easily enough, and the only
thing you will need to take care with is that you go to ground during
Storms.

"Our gryphons use the same means," Darkwind seconded.

"It's safer than you'd think. You'll be able to cross into Karse within
a few days, even with having to land twice or three times a day as a
Storm passes."

"Then I thank you, for I will have to seal off the Temple as well as our nodes, and whether or not Tremane will believe that, it will be a harder task than this." Her words were still a little sardonic, but she smiled, and Elspeth sensed that Solaris would no longer be able to say in truth that she hated Tremane of Hardorn.

"And you?" Father Janas asked Elspeth and Darkwind.

Darkwind answered for both of them.

"It is already accomplished," Darkwind said, his voice heavy with tired
content. "Gwena has sent the word to Rolan; Rolan has sent it on to
Skif's Cymry who will detail it to the Kaled'a'in of k'leshya Vale.
They will see to it that Tayledras and Shin'a'in alike have the
information, and our nodes and Heartstones will be protected within
days. Messages will go from Valdemar to every White Winds mage in every
land, and from there-wherever the word needs to go."

"Your Companions are useful friends," Father Janas said with envy.
"Perhaps there will be room for them in Hardorn in the future." He
looked shyly at Solaris. "And there should be room for Temples to the
Sunlord as well, I should think. When it all comes down to it, what is done for the cause of Good is done in the name of every Power of the Light."

She smiled; the first open, unshadowed smile that Elspeth had seen on her face since she arrived here. "And on that very optimistic note, I shall thank you and beg leave to go to bed myself," she said, getting to her feet. "Hansa and I have a long journey in the morning."

"Room for everyone," Darkwind echoed, as he and Elspeth walked slowly to their own quarters. "That is not so bad a way to conduct one's land."

"I know," she replied saucily. "We've been doing it that way in Valdemar for some time now." And now, at least, we have some assurance we will continue to be able to, she thought. And now we can spare some prayers and energy for Karal and the rest where they are. May all our gods help them, for we cannot.

Emperor Charliss sat in, not on, the wooden Throne in his private
quarters, and plotted revenge, for revenge was all he had left to hold
him to life. His mind was clear, despite the hellish mix of drugs his
apothecary had concocted on his orders, to dull his pain and sustain his failing body. That was because the mix included drugs to keep his mind from becoming clouded. Outside his quarters, a physical blizzard raged, as it had raged for the past three weeks. The mage-storms, too, passed through Crag Castle several times every day, leaving most mages
shuddering with the aftereffects. He wasn't suffering from that
difficulty, though; or if he was, it was insignificant in the light of
the degeneration of his body.

Although he did not appear to take any notice of what was going on
outside this suite, such was not the case. He knew very well what Melles was up to; discrediting the Emperor even with the Imperial Army,
spreading truths, half-truths, and lies to make it appear that only
Baron Melles had the welfare of the Empire in his heart. He was also
quite well aware that Melles was doing a fine job of holding the Empire
together, even if it was with devious and dubious means. He knew that
Melles was using the Emperor's treatment of Tremane as a weapon to bring the feuding political factions of the Empire together under Melles' control. It was a ploy that would not have occurred to Charliss, but in retrospect, given that Melles was detested by at least a quarter of the Great Players in the game of Empire, and feared by another quarter, the only way he could have united them was to find a common enemy they could hate worse than him.

None of that mattered, for he no longer cared what Melles or any other
living man did. His priorities were different, and much more personal.

The spells that kept his worn-out body going, that reinforced failing
organs, were themselves failing. Each time a Storm came through, he lost more of them and was unable to replace all the spells that were lost.

He saw no way of being able to save himself; he was dying, and he knew
it. He could no longer move under his own power anymore; his servants
carried him from bed to Throne and back again, all within the confines
of his private quarters. The long, slow decline he had anticipated had
accelerated out of all recognition.

He was not afraid, but he was angry, with the kind of calculating,
all-consuming anger only a man who had lived two centuries could muster. He had been cheated of the last, precious years of his life, and he knew precisely where to lay the blame for it.

Valdemar.

He had sent his scholars on a search for that benighted land and its
origin, and had learned things that gave him all the more reason to
assume that it was Valdemar that had unleashed these Storms across the
face of the land. Valdemar had been founded centuries ago by rebellious
subjects of the Empire who had escaped into the wilderness too deeply to follow.

But time and distance were no barriers to revenge, as he himself very
well knew. The rulers of Valdemar had probably been plotting this attack against the Empire ever since their land was founded. A plot such as this one would have taken centuries to mature, centuries to gather the power for. These Storms could not have been generated by anything less than the most powerful of Adepts working together in concert; such a weapon was fiendishly clever, diabolically complicated.

In the end it might have been his own actions in reaching for the land
of Hardorn that triggered the long plots of Valdemar and gave them the
opportunity to destroy those who had driven them out of their homes so
long ago. He should have read the return of his envoy from Hardorn,
dead, with the blade belonging to Princess Elspeth between his
shoulders, for the serious warning it really was. You're too close, and
we'll finish you; that had been the real message. Like a nest of bees,
he had ventured too near, and now the insects would swarm him and
destroy him.

It didn't really matter what the cause for their actions was, nor did it matter whether he could have done anything to prevent this. The Storms had been unleashed, he was dying, it was all the fault of Valdemar, and he was going to see to it that Valdemar didn't outlive him-at least, not in any form that the Valdemarans themselves would recognize. Like a wild bear making a final charge, in his death throes he would destroy those who were destroying him.

He had everything he needed; all of the magic of the local nodes, plus
all that of his coterie of mages, plus a great deal he had hoarded in
carefully-shielded artifacts. Every Emperor created magical artifacts,
or caused them to be created; he could drain every one of them. Every
mage he had ever worked with, whether he was one of Charliss' private
group or not, had a magical "hook" in him, one that tied him back to
Charliss.

The moment Charliss cared to, he could pull every bit of that mage's
personal power and use it as if the mage was one of his personal troupe. The smartest of the mages had, of course, discovered and removed that hook-but most of them hadn't, and Charliss could use them up any time he cared to.

But his own time was rapidly running out. The shields protecting those
hoarded objects weren't going to last through too many more Storms, nor
were the resources of his mage troupe, nor of the mages he had hooks in. If he was going to use this power, it would have to be soon.

He sat supported by the tall back and heavy arms of his mock Throne, and contemplated the methods of vengeance.

What could he do to finish them, these upstart Valdemarans?

What form should his attack take? He wanted it to be appropriate,
suitable-and he wanted it to do the most damage possible.

What would the best allocation of his resources be? It's obvious.

Release all the power at once, he decided. Release it as the wave-front
of the Storm passes, and use it to augment what the Storm does. Make it
the worst Storm that the face of this old world has ever seen.

The results of that should be highly entertaining, and since he would
release it as the Storm passed from east to west, most of the Empire
would be safe.

But Valdemar-ah, Valdemar would have no idea that the blow was coming.
The results of such an enormous release of power would be devastating-and amusing, if he lived to watch it, and to collect his information.

Everything from Hardorn to far beyond Valdemar, and from the mountains
in the North to the South of Karse, would erupt with Nature driven mad.
The weather was already hideous; this would make it unbelievably worse.
Earthquake-there would be earthquakes in regions that had never known so much as a trembler, as the stresses in the earth built to beyond the
breaking point. Fire-volcanoes would erupt out of nowhere, pouring down
rivers of molten rock on unsuspecting cities. Physical storms would
spawn lightning that in turn would ignite huge forest fires and grass
fires. Blizzards would bury some areas in snow past the rooftops, while
floods would wash away the country elsewhere, and mudslides make a ruin
of once-fertile hills. Mountains would fling themselves skyward, and the earth would gape as huge fissures opened underfoot.

Processes that normally took millennia would occur in a single day or
less. There would be no place that was safe, no place to hide. And when
the wrath of Nature was over, the Changed creatures would descend on the demoralized and disorganized survivors.

It would be everything he could have wished for. He just wished he was
going to live long enough to properly gloat over it; once the energy was released, Charliss would have no more magic to sustain him, and he would die. But so would most of his enemies. Anyone and anything that lived through it all would probably wish for death before too very long.

Tremane would be caught in all of this, of course, which would give him
revenge on the faithless traitor-revenge that Melles had been too
cowardly or too lazy to take. Lazy, probably; Melles never had been one
to pursue targets that were out of his immediate reach; he could always
manufacture excuses to obviate any need to do so.

Well, he would take matters into his own hands, then.

It was possible that the extra energy released wouldn't just wipe
Valdemar off the world-it might rip through the Empire and its allies as well. The chaos he was about to unleash could have far-reaching effects.

He didn't care. He was long since over caring about things that meant no immediate improvement in his well-being.

Why should my Empire outlive me? he asked himself, seething with
resentment over the fact that the Empire as a whole was not willing to
make the sacrifices to sustain him.

I gave them my life and my attention-my entire life. Was I appreciated?
Beloved for being stern with them? No. Not at all. They took and took.
Now they pay for their greed. They should have thought ahead and
appeased me.

And there was no reason to make life any easier for Melles either. Let
him patch something together from what was left, if, indeed, there was
anything left. Let Melles see if he could actually do something with the crumbs and shards. It would serve that effete bastard right.

He smiled slowly, thinking of how Melles would react. The Baron had been progressing so well in imposing order on the chaos left in the wake of the Storms. He must feel so proud of himself, and be so certain that he had everything under control now. It would be delicious to see how he crumbled as everything he had worked so hard for vanished before his eyes.

Revenge; on Valdemar, on Tremane, even on Melles for daring to
succeed-that was all Charliss had left, and he would take it. By the
time he was finished, the known world would be driven down to the level
of cave-dwelling, nomad-hunter survival. If Melles reclaimed anything at all as an Empire, it would be an Empire no bigger than this city.

I will destroy it all. His hands clutched the arms of his chair, and he
felt his dry lips cracking as his smile widened.

When he set off the final cataclysm, when he ignited nations to form his funeral pyre, he would prove he had been the greatest and most powerful Emperor to ever live.

No one would ever surpass him as he burned the world to light the way to his grave, and the darkness that followed would be a fitting shroud.

Karal felt peculiarly useless at this moment in time, although in a
little while he would be just as important as anyone else in the Tower.
He watched the others making last minute preparations, and wished
wistfully that he could use the teleson to talk to Natoli; it might have relieved his nerves.

He sat quietly where he'd been told to sit, immersed in a peculiar
mixture of terror, resignation, and anticipation. He knew he could do
what they were going to ask of him, but he couldn't think past that.
Even when he tried, he was unable to imagine a single moment after their task was done. Was that only because he was frightened, or because once it was over it would be over for them, forever?

He was still acting as the Channel for this "weapon," but this time he
would not be in the physical center of the group.

This time the main participants-himself, Firesong, An'desha, and
Sejanes-would stand in square formation around it, and it didn't seem to matter what direction each stood in, so long as they were spaced equally around it.

There was another difference this time. Each of the "mortal"
participants would be shielded by those who were not.

Karal had Florian and Altra; An'desha would be protected by the Avatars, Firesong by Need and Yfandes, and Sejanes by Vanyel and Stefen. Yfandes had attached herself to Firesong without comment, perhaps, so that each of the participants would have two protectors. Aya was to be kept strictly out of the way, in the care of Silverfox, with the rest of those who were not participating. They would all be in the workroom below, with the hatch closed. Firesong and Sejanes had determined that the shields on the workroom were as much purely physical as magical. There were properties in the stone that insulated from magical energy. The workroom had been cleared of anything remotely magical in nature, and stocked with tools, food, and water, so that if the worst happened and the survivors were sealed inside, they had a chance to dig themselves out.

The cube-maze was the exact opposite of whatever device was used to
unleash the Cataclysm in the first place, and the Adepts had surmised
that it had been created as a fail-safe. As they now understood it, all
of Urtho's magic had been released at once when he dissipated the bonds
of all of the spells on everything that was not inside the specially
shielded areas of the Tower. At the same time, a similar device had done the same to all of Ma'ar's magic in his stronghold, thus creating the Cataclysm as the two reacted together in violent and sometimes
unexpected ways. They had partly replicated that when they set up the
Counter-Storm.

This time, if their research and planning paid off, they were going to
reverse that; they were going to open up something that would swallow
all of the magic energies converging on this spot and send it all out
into the Void. At least, they hoped that was what would happen. They
didn't know what was going to happen at the other original release
point, but Ma'ar had not been the tinkerer that Urtho had been, and had
not been known for having workshops to experiment in. There were
probably not any of the dangerous devices there that there were here-and in any case, the site was at the bottom of Lake Evendim. Whatever
happened there would take place under furlongs of water, and far from
any populations of human or other beings.

No one knew what would follow when they closed the device as the last of the energies were swallowed up. They all had some theories. Master Levy insisted that since no energy could be destroyed, it would all go
elsewhere; his suggestion was that it would become a kind of energy-pool in the Void that mages could all tap into. He also warned that
resistance to energy flow usually manifested as heat, and there was a
very real possibility that despite their best efforts all here would be
charred to death partway through. This earned the mathematician a few
sour looks, which were returned with an apologetic smile. Both Lo'isha
and Firesong were of the opinion that all the energy would come right
back into the "real" world, as if a flood was swallowed up and came back out of the sky as rain, like the water in a fountain, endlessly cycling from pond to air and back again.

Whatever happened, the only certainty was that all the old rules of
magic would go flying right out the window. No one even knew if all of
this energy was ever going to be accessible anymore. They might end up
with a world that was fundamentally without magic, though that was
fairly unlikely.

As Urtho had said in the placards that he had left, this would have been a suicidal device to use as a weapon; once it was opened, it would have proceeded to swallow all the magic in its vicinity-in fact, it was quite likely to drain all the rest of the weaponry in here dry-and it might even have swallowed up the mages who opened it. But with the tremendous energies of this Storm breaking over it, the device would probably have all the energy it could possibly handle.

The plan was to take down the Tower shields and open it as the Final
Storm hit, feed it all the energy of the Storm until it couldn't take
any more or melted down, and close it again under control if it was
still active.

Storms were coming in all the time now, and although the Tower shields
were still holding, they had been forced to evacuate the remains of the
Shin'a'in camp some days ago as a blizzard like none of their hosts had
ever seen before raged across the Plains. Similar weather ravaged
Valdemar, Karse, Hardorn, the Vales-Probably everywhere else, too, Karal thought, listening carefully. And it's supposed to be spring out there. If he paid very close attention, he could ignore all the sounds coming from inside the Tower, and was able to pick out, very faintly, the howling of the winds outside. You couldn't even stand out there, the wind would knock you to the ground in a heartbeat.

It was a good thing that they had evacuated the Plains weeks ago; tents
wouldn't take this kind of pounding, and no horse, sheep, or mule would
survive exposed to a storm like this.

As for the Vales-Firesong said that the Tayledras were incorporating
the magic that shielded nodes with the one that formed the Veil that
protected each of their Vales. Hopefully, these would hold; if not, they would have to live as the scouts did from now on, exposed to the
elements, without their little lands of artificial summer.

Karal wished he knew what was going on in Karse; Altra would only say
that Solaris had the situation well under control, and that most of the
people were being well cared for. He hoped that his family was all
right, though since they were living in a fairly prosperous village,
they should be. The ones in real danger would be the remote farmers and
shepherds who, isolated and alone out in the hills and mountains, might
not have gotten warning in time to get to adequate shelter.

He hadn't thought about his family in a long time; the Karal that had
helped his father in the inn's stables was another person entirely, and
he knew that if his mother or father were to pass him in the street,
they would not recognize him. And he would have nothing whatsoever in
common with them. He had always expected to change as he grew up-but not this radically.

He tucked up his legs and rested his chin on his knees, thinking
wistfully about all he had left behind-all he would leave behind if this effort failed. When it came right down to it. there were only a handful of people who would actually miss him if he didn't come out of this, and most if not all of them would recover quickly enough. Natoli probably wouldn't exactly-recover, but she would manage, and go on to make something good out of her life. And meanwhile, he would have done
something important with his life, and there weren't too many people who could actually say that. The thought, though bleak, was curiously
liberating.

He had made his good-byes to everyone except those who were still in the Tower itself, down in the workroom; he still had time, and this might be the moment to take care of that little detail.

He got to his feet and slipped down the stairs, hoping to find Tarm and Lyam alone. He was lucky; Lo'isha, Master Levy and Silverfox were still up above, with the handful of Shin'a'in who were still here, wedging doors to other weapon rooms open and helping to drag the cube-maze out of its little room into the main one. No matter what else happened here, they were at least going to accomplish one thing Urtho could not; they were going to render every other weapon in the Tower inactive.

Their industry left the workroom mostly untenanted. Only Aya sat
nervously on a perch in the corner, while Lyam and Tarm puttered about,
storing things away more efficiently.

He stood uncertainly on the stairs, and it was Tarm who noticed him
first. "Well, young one, it is nearly time," the kyree said, looking
unusually solemn.

"I know," he replied, sitting down on the bottom steps. "I came to tell
you both that I'm very glad I knew you, and I learned a lot from both of you." They left what they had been working on to join him.

"I am very pleased to have been your friend, Karal," Lyam said earnestly, taking Karal's hand in his own dry and leather-skinned claw-hand. "I hope we will be able to continue that friendship after Tarm and I have gone back to k'leshya."

"And you figure prominently in my Chronicles, young scholar," Tarm said gravely, with a slight bow of his graying head, giving Karal what the young Karsite knew were the two most important accolades in the kyree's vocabulary-being called a scholar and being told he had a prominent place in the history Tarm was writing. "In days to come, cubs will be astonished that I actually had the privilege of your friendship."

An awkward silence might have started then, but at that very moment,
Silverfox came trotting down the stairs, followed by all the rest. "It's time, Karal," the kestra'chern said, and gave Karal a completely unself-conscious hug. "They're waiting for you."

"Good luck, boy," Master Levy called, and cracked an unexpected smile.
"Don't disappoint Natoli; she's expecting you to take careful notes and
tell her all your observations." Lo'isha only clasped his hand warmly
and looked deeply and gravely into his eyes, and the rest of the
Shin'a'in paused long enough to give him the nod of respect they
normally only accorded to Lo'isha.

Each of them in his own way was saying farewell-giving him what
encouragement they could-without doing anything that might unnerve him
or shake his confidence. He knew that, and knew that they knew it as
well. And he knew that he should be afraid, but somehow all his fear had passed away as he made those farewells, as if each of them was taking a little bit of it with them, so that he could be freed to do his task.

He walked quickly up the stairs; Firesong and An'desha waited up there
to lower the hatch down into place, once again sealing it behind shields both magical and physical. The cube-maze was the first thing he saw as his head came up out of the hatchway; placed in the center of the room, it was curiously dwarfed by the sheer size of the place.

It looked very pretty, a piece of abstract art, gleaming with blue and
purple reflections in the light from overhead. Sejanes was already in
his place flanked by the two wisps that were Vanyel and Stefen.
Dawnfire and Tre'valen, looking far more solid, waited on either side of An'desha's position, and another white wraith stood beside the place
where Firesong would stand. Firesong already had Need in a sheath on his back, and as he took his stand, he drew the mage-sword and held her.

An'desha moved to his place between the two Avatars, a closed-in
expression on his face, as if already concentrating on what he was going to do. Sejanes had his eyes closed and his hands cupped in front of him.

As Karal took his own place, flanked by Florian and Altra, Firesong made a little movement that caught his attention, and as he glanced at the Hawkbrother, Firesong gave him a wry grin and a one-handed sign for
encouragement. Somehow, that made him feel better than he had all day,
and he set his feet with more confidence.

As the terrible energies broke over them, Firesong was to open the
device, and hold it open; next to being the Channel, his was the most
dangerous task. An'desha and Sejanes were to act as funnels and control
the energies as they converged on Karal, keeping a steady flow. Surges
would be particularly dangerous; if a surge of power overwhelmed Karal,
he might block the flow. If that happened, it would feed back on all of
them. It was also the job of Sejanes and An'desha to "homogenize" the
incoming energies by mixing them, for a flood of only one kind might do
the same thing. Karal would actually transmute them before feeding them
into the device. "Are we ready?" Firesong asked, looking around the
circle at all of them. Each of them nodded, and Karal saw for a moment,
in each of their faces, the same resignation that he himself felt.

They all think in their hearts that they are going to die. They're putting on a brave face for the rest of us.

And he did the same. Despite all their care and planning, this could go
horribly wrong, and if it did, it wouldn't just be one of them that
would take the brunt of the punishment, it would be all of them.

"Here it comes," warned Altra, and then there was no time to think of
anything else.

Charliss waited, tense with anticipation as he had not been in decades.
This would be perhaps the most powerful spell that had ever been cast in the history of the world since the Cataclysm; it would certainly be the most powerful spell ever cast in the history of the Empire. And for all that, it was such a deceptively simple thing-just a spell that released all of the energy of every magical object and person within Crag Castle that Charliss had any control over. This would probably kill all of his mages. If it didn't, it would certainly leave them disabled for many weeks, and might well destroy their minds.

That had a certain piquant pleasure to it, for this spell would
definitely kill its caster, and Charliss was not at all averse to taking an escort with him when he died.

The only emotion within his breast now was rage; it left no room for
anything else. It really left no room for any thought but revenge.

He might well be the last Emperor, and that thought had the sweetness of revenge. More so since no one would ever know that he was the one who had done this-those few who knew he was spell-casting thought it was of the usual sort, that he was trying to extend his life a little longer.

They would probably blame Melles for this, since the mages who would die would all be mages closely allied with Charliss. That was even sweeter. Melles would have all the blame as the man who had destroyed the Empire, and Charliss would acquire the virtues that Melles did not have in contrast.

Melles would be the terrible villain, and Charliss the saint that he
destroyed. What a subtle revenge!

The only thing that would make it better would be to know for certain
that he was taking Tremane down with him. But never mind. One couldn't
have everything-and if Tremane didn't actually die in the catastrophe
that Charliss unleashed, he might well be among those who wished he had.

Charliss gathered the threads of his power in his hands, and waited for
the Storm to break.

It was a strange little gathering, here in the Great Hall of Tremane's
manor. Tashiketh and the four gryphons that were left with him, part of
Solaris' escort of Sun-priests that had remained behind to help, Elspeth and Gwena, Darkwind and Vree, Brytha the dyheli, all of Tremane's mages, the two old weather-wizards from Shonar itself, and Father Janas, all arranged in concentric circles around Tremane. Anyone with even the tiniest bit of Mage-Gift was here, and they would all be working on a single task; to create and hold a shield. If they could hold it over Shonar, they would-if that proved impossible, they would try to hold it over the castle, and if that failed, just over themselves.

The scene looked and felt unreal and dreamlike, but Elspeth was doing
her best to control a fear that was as deep and all-pervasive as the fear in a nightmare. For once, the menace looming over Elspeth was invisible, implacable, and faceless.

There was no villain, no Ancar, no Falconsbane; only a terrible thing
that had been loosed millennia ago and was now coming home, too ancient, impersonal, and powerful to grasp, yet too real not to terrify.

Nevertheless, the danger was real enough, and it would be worse if the
group in the Tower failed. There had been a blizzard howling across the
face of Hardorn for the past three days, the strangest such storm that
Elspeth had ever seen.

Greenish lightning somewhere up above the solid curtains of snow
illuminated the entire sky in flashes, yet revealed nothing but white.
There were reports of whirlwinds, and of spirits riding the wind,
strange creatures blowing before it. None of these reports had been
verified, but Elspeth would not discount any of them.

Every time that Storms came through, the effect was worse-although every one of the node-shields held with no apparent problems. But this Storm was going to be worse, much worse, than any of the previous lot. This was the return of the initial blast that had caused all of the storms, so long ago.

As for what would happen if the group at the Tower failed-no one could
predict that, except that it would be terrible.

Nature already raged out of control; could they deal with years of this?

Never mind. It was out of her hands, and that was what felt the most
unreal of all. She had never been in a position where she was utterly
helpless to do something about her own peril before, never been in a
case where she had no control over what was going to happen. She felt
demoralized and impotent, and she didn't like it one bit.

Darkwind squeezed her hand, and Gwena rubbed her soft nose against
Elspeth's shoulder. Well, at least she wasn't facing this alone; no one
else in this room had any more control over the situation than she did.

"It's time," Tremane said hoarsely. "It's coming." And now it was too
late to think about anything but joining mind, heart, and power with the others, disparate as they were, and shield and hold with grim
determination...

"Now," Firesong said between his clenched teeth, as the Storm broke over them. Around them, the stone of the Tower rumbled and groaned, like a carriage-spring being twisted beyond its ability to return to normal. This time was unlike all the previous experiences with the energy of the Storm, in that it had a distinct sound-a hollow,
screaming roar accompanied by a steady increase in air pressure.
Firesong held Need up between himself and the cube-maze, spoke some
apparently private words to the sword, and did something to the taut
fabric of magic that Karal half-saw, half-felt-Then the cube-maze
scattered motes of light along its surfaces, toward the apex of the
topmost cube, and a ring spread outward to the farthest edges of the
device-and all inside that ring vanished, and in its place was what
could only be described as a great Darkness. The Void. The Pit.

Karal sensed it pulling on him and let it; Florian and Altra held him
anchored as he let some inner part of himself meld with that awful
darkness in the center of their circle. Then there was nothing but Light and Dark; the Pit in the center, and a coruscating, scintillating, rainbow-hued play of light and power all about it. Karal felt part of himself opening to it, sensed that he had become the conduit to send that power down into the Pit, which swallowed it hungrily but did not yet demand more than he could feed it.

All of his attention was on the Pit before him; he sensed explosions of
energy behind and to all sides, and the energies around him oscillated
furiously. He tried to contain them and shove them into the dark maw, but the Pit had reached the limit at which it could accept them.

He heard shouting; it sounded like An'desha's voice, but he couldn't
make out what the Shin'a'in was trying to tell him.

Off to his fight, a shining shape emerged from the chaos of swirling,
flashing light, growing brighter with every moment.

It was Firesong, with Need glowing white-hot in his hands.

He trembled in agony but refused to give in to the obvious pain of his
blistering flesh.

Melles paused outside the Emperor's doorway-for once unguarded, thanks
to the complicity of the Emperor's personal guard. With the geas binding them in loyalty to the Emperor now quite gone, they were all of them able to think for themselves, including Commander Ethen, who had
replaced the now nerve-shattered Commander Peleun. In the past several
weeks, they, too, had seen and heard enough-not quite enough to take
things into their own hands, but enough to make them willing to leave
their posts for a carefully-staged "emergency." There was no sound in
the white-marble corridor except for the ever-present screaming of the
wind. Even sheltered inside their glass chimneys, the candle flames that had taken the place of mage-lights flickered in icy drafts strong enough to have earned the name of "breeze." But these gusts were no zephyrs, and the blizzard out there wasn't half as powerful as the Storm now breaking over them was likely to make it.

The Emperor was going to be utterly engrossed in his spell-casting; over the past several days, Melles had made a point of going in and out of the Emperor's chambers and the Throne Room on one pretext or another
during a Storm, and he knew that Charliss was completely oblivious to
everything around him when he was spell-casting.

If the Emperor had put half the effort on holding his crumbling Empire
together that he was spending on maintaining his crumbling body, Melles
would not have felt so impelled to remove him now.

If he had done so, Melles would not have half the allies he now had
either.

He walked boldly into the Emperor's quarters, as he had any number of
times over the past few days, as if in search of an official paper or
something of the sort. He ignored the unconscious mages sprawled over
the furniture in the outer room, taken down either by the Storm itself
or the Emperor's ruthless plundering of their energies.

The Emperor would not be here or in his bedroom; Melles already knew
that Charliss had ordered his servants to carry him into the empty,
cavernous Throne Room and placed him in the Iron Throne itself. He made
a tiny hand-sign to the two bodyguards standing on either side of the
door, a pair of bodyguards from his own retinue, inserted into the
Emperor's personnel with the collusion of the Guard Commander. They
acknowledged his presence with a slight nod and stood aside.

He opened the door to the Throne Room carefully, a fraction at a time,
as he sensed the Storm building to an unheard-of fury and a new and
oddly-flavored spell building inside the room in concert with it.

He wasn't certain why the Emperor had taken to casting his magics while
in the embrace of the Iron Throne, wearing the Wolf Crown, but it made
his own task easier. There would be no witnesses and a dozen entrances
through which a murderer could have made his escape, assuming that there were even any murmurs of foul play. He frankly doubted that would be the case. People were far more likely to point to all of the loyal
bodyguards on duty, each within eye- and ear-shot of the next pair, and
believe the report of suicide.

Despite the roaring fires and a half-dozen charcoal braziers around
Charliss' feet, the room was icy, but not still. Charliss could already
have been a wizened corpse, hunched over in the cold embrace of the
Throne, eyes closed, white, withered hands clenched on the arms. Only
the yellow gem-eyes of the wolves in the Crown watched him, and he
fancied that there was a look of life in those eyes, as they waited to
see what he would do. But wolves protected only cubs and territory and
they had no interest in protecting individuals once those individuals
were detrimental to the welfare of the pack. They would not hinder
Melles in what he intended to do.

There was a tightly-woven, furiously rotating spell building up around
the Emperor, a spell somehow akin to the Storm outside. Did Charliss
think to tap the power of the Storm now to bolster his failing magics?
If so, he was mad.

The spell neared its peak. After years of watching Charliss spell-cast,
Melles knew the Emperor's rhythms and patterns.

If he was going to strike, he had better do so now. He slipped a sharp
dagger, pommel ornamented with the Imperial Seal, out of the hem of his
heavy fur-trimmed tunic. He had purloined this very dagger out of the
Emperor's personal quarters two days ago; it was well known to be one of Charliss' favorite trophy-pieces and virtually every member of the Court would readily identify it as his and no one else's.

Now. Before Charliss woke from his self-imposed trance, realized his
danger, and turned all that terrible energy on him.

As only a trained assassin could, Melles flipped the dagger in his hand
until he held only the point between his thumb and forefinger, aimed,
and threw.

The dagger flew straight and true, with all the power of Melles' arm and anger behind it. With a wet thud, it buried itself to the hilt in
Charliss' left eye. The Emperor was killed instantly, left with a
slack-jawed version of his self-absorbed expression.

But the spell he had been about to unleash did not die with him.

For one instant, Melles felt the chill hand of horrified fear clutch his throat, as it had not in decades, and he waited to be pounded to the earth as the rogue spell lashed out at him.

The gathered energies, with no direction, and no controls, whirled in a
vortex of light around the Emperor's body for a moment, obscuring him.
Rays of light shot upward, punching holes through the darkness, leaving
scorched spots in the ceiling.

Other sparks jumped and careened, arcing back to the sword points
arrayed in ominous fans behind and around the Iron Throne. The crackling sparks disappeared with a flash and a soft sizzle. Then suddenly, the vortex stilled, and a moment later, the gathered energy invested itself in the Iron Throne, leaving it glowing for a moment before returning-apparently to its original state.

Melles let out his breath in a hiss, walked tentatively over to
Charliss, and reached for the Wolf Crown. He touched it for just a
moment, and he could have sworn that the pack-leader on the front of the crown grinned at him.

Then he removed the dagger from the dead man's eye; a thin trickle of
blood followed the removal of the blade, but it took less force to pull
it out of the skull than Melles had feared. The corpse of the former
Emperor was already falling to pieces. He examined the wound; it could
be made to look less serious. He made a few more facial wounds with
quick stabs, as if Charliss had cut himself about the face in a mad
frenzy. Then he placed the dagger in Charliss' hands, clenched both the
flaccid hands around the hilt, pressed the point to the Emperor's
breast, and shoved, piercing the heart.

He checked to make certain that he had not gotten any blood on himself,
more as a reflex than anything else; he had been a professional for too
long to have made so foolish a mistake.

Then he strolled casually out the door, nodding to the guards as he
passed. In a few more moments, they would go in, find Charliss, and
report that the Emperor, distraught and deranged by his failing magic
and crumbling health, had committed suicide.

And long live the new Emperor, may he reign a hundred years.

Karal was on his knees. Altra was beside him, a glowing cat-image under
his groping hand. Florian stood braced between him and the Pit, a
horse-shape of Fire against the darkness.

To his right, looming out of the swirling, fluctuating energies,
Firesong still stood like a blinding statue of a warrior with upraised
sword-a high keening sound that somehow penetrated as if the roar
in Karal's ears came from Need, the sword had somehow acquired a voice. To his left, there was no sign of An'desha, but two bird-human shapes with feathers of flame wove a restless web all about a shadowed core. He couldn't see Sejanes at all across the Pit.

He sensed the energies around them were winning. They couldn't feed the
Pit fast enough, and their protectors were burning out.

And yet, he was no longer afraid. Even if they didn't survive, they had
fed enough of the terrible power into the Pit to prevent a second
Cataclysm. As he gazed on the burning image of Florian, great peace
descended on his heart, and he faced the terrible, glorious, mystical
fire without flinching.

Once again, he stood in the heart of the Sun and knew he was welcome
there. He opened himself up to it fully, and lost himself there, past
fear, past pain, past everything but the Light.

And then his awareness of self evaporated, and there was nothing more.

The light was gone; the Light was gone. There was nothing but darkness,
yet Florian's image still continued to bum against that dark.

He was lying on his back. His groping hands encountered rough blankets
over him, then warm fur.

"I think he's awake," said Lo'isha in a low voice.

He coughed, cleared his throat, and replied, "I am awake. How is everyone? Did the light fail?" His question was answered with the
kind of heavy silence that only occurs when someone has unwittingly
asked a question that has an answer that will make him very unhappy.

"Firesong has been...  hurt," Silverfox said gently. "An'desha and
Sejanes are quite all right, only tired." He tried to sit up, and felt
hands on his chest holding him down. "How badly hurt is Firesong?" he
asked urgently. "Can I see him? Where's Florian? Haven't you got any
lights going yet?"

Again, that awkward silence, and then the answer came to him, to his last question at least, as Lo'isha asked, very softly, "What can you see?"

"Nothing," he whispered, stunned. "Only-Florian-"

"It seems that those whose guardians were entirely spirit fared the
best," said Lyam in that dry way of his.

The fur draped over his legs moved…Florian is gone, Karal," Altra said,
in the gentlest tones that Karal had ever heard him use. "I am the only
one of the protectors to survive the experience. I am sorry." Karal moved his head, and still saw nothing but darkness and the fiery image of Florian in reverse silhouette against it.

He swallowed, as the full impact of realization hit him, and felt hot
tears burning their way down his face. Florian-gone? Protecting him? He blinked, but nothing changed in what he saw—or rather, what he didn't see.

"You see nothing, Karal?" Lo'isha persisted. He shook his head dumbly.

"What about Firesong?" he asked, around a cold lump in his gut and a
second lump in his throat. "Is he-like me?"

"No, but-the sword, Need-she exploded in a mist of molten metal in his
hands. His face and hands are badly burned." That was Lyam. "I just sent Silverfox back to him."

Although tears of mourning continued to trickle down Karal's face, he nodded. "Good," he managed. "I don't really need a Healer..." He let his voice trail off, making a kind of question out of it.

"No, Karal," Lo'isha said, with a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I'm
afraid a Healer won't do you any good right now."

"Then, just leave me with Altra for a bit, would you?" he asked, and
after a while, he heard them get up and move away.

He felt Altra settle on his chest and legs, and began gently scratching
the Firecat's ears. Tears slid down his cheeks, and Altra continued to
rasp them away.

"Karal?" Altra asked, after a long silence. He answered the Firecat with a fierce hug.

"Just stay with me," he whispered.

"I'll never leave you, Karal," Altra promised. "Never. Not for as long as you live."

Firesong remembered the exact moment when Need lost her battle to shield him, which was right after Yfandes had evaporated into motes of energy. She had screamed-a warning, he thought-and he had let her go and flung one arm over his eyes to protect them. All he remembered after that was pain.

He hadn't ever lost consciousness, and right now, loss of all awareness
would have been a blessing. Silverfox had given him something that
turned the terrible agony into bearable agony, but he still hurt. Almost as bad was the knowledge of what had happened to him. He knew what he looked like-and worse, he knew what he was going to look like. No Healer would be able to keep scar tissue from forming, and his face-He struggled to keep back tears, tears of pain, tears of loss.

Yes he had been vain, and why not? His face had won him all the lovers
he had ever wanted, and now no one would ever give him a second glance.

A touch on his arm made him start and open his tightly-closed eyes.
"Ashke, I am here," said Silverfox, his face full of concern. "Are you
in pain?"

"Better to ask, what doesn't hurt," he replied, trying to make a feeble
joke of it. "I am trying not to scream; it is very impolite, and would
frighten An'desha."

"We have sent the Kal'enedral out for stronger pain-drugs," Silverfox
told him tenderly, resting one hand on the part of his arm that was not
burned. "They should be back soon. The blizzard stopped, and the snow is melting, and in a little we will have gryphons or horses here to take you to k'leshya.

"Kaled'a'in Healers are very good." He hesitated, then added, "It is a
pity they are not good enough to help Karal." That snapped him out of
the slough of self-pity he was wallowing in. "What about Karal?" he
asked sharply.

"I think-he has lost his sight." Silverfox looked away for a moment.

Lost his sight? For one bitter moment, Firesong actually envied him.
Better to lose his sight than to go through life, scorned and pitied, to have people look away from you because they could not bear the sight of you-But even as he thought that, he rejected the thought with anger at himself. You fool, he told himself scornfully. You vain, self-important fool! You are alive with all your senses; you are neither crippled nor incapacitated, and you still have Aya.

As if to underscore that last, the firebird trilled a little from his
perch beside Firesong's pallet.

Poor Karal, came the thought at last. "Poor lad," he sighed, "Florian,
and this-" then involuntarily whimpered as the movement sent pain lacing through the bums on his face. He felt tears start up, and soak into his bandages.

Silverfox cupped his hands at Firesong's temples, and started into his
eyes with fierce concentration. As Firesong looked into his eyes, some
of the pain began to recede, and he almost wept again, this time with
relief. "I will be glad-" he gasped, "-when those pain-drugs arrive."

"They cannot arrive soon enough for me," Silverfox muttered, then
managed something of a wan smile. "You are being much braver than I
would. I cannot bear pain."

"It is not too bad, except when I am alone," Firesong said, still gazing into those warmly compassionate eyes.

And somehow, those eyes softened further. "In that case, ashke, I will
never leave you." the handsome kestra'chern said softly. "If you think
you can bear to have me here." And for a moment, Firesong forgot any
pain at all.

An'desha lay curled up with his face to the wall, and Karal could tell
by his shaking shoulders that he was weeping silently.

The view through Altra's eyes was rather disconcerting, given that
Altra's head was about at knee-height, and he had to look up to see
peoples' faces when they stood. But at least now, with Altra glued to
his leg and lending him the view, he wasn't bumping into things, nor
tripping over them.

Karal knelt down beside An'desha's pallet, and put a hand on his
shoulder. "If you keep this up much longer," he said, trying not to
dissolve into tears himself and make things worse, "you're going to be
sick." An'desha only shook his head violently, and Karal tried to
remember exactly what it was that Lo'isha had told him.

"An'desha blames himself for the loss of the others, especially the
Avatars," the Kaled'a'in had said. "You must persuade him to walk the
Moonpaths, or-or it will be bad for his soul, his heart. I have not been able to persuade him." The older man had left it at that, but there was no doubt in Karal's mind that he knew how An'desha had managed to help him through his own crisis of conscience. Altra had seconded the Shin'a'in's request as soon as Lo'isha was off tending to some other urgent problem. After that, how could Karal have possibly refused?

"There wasn't anything you did or didn't do that would have made a
difference for the better," Karal persisted. "How could there have been? We tried to do more than Urtho could, and it still came out better than we had any reason to expect!"

"I should have known about those other weapons," An'desha said, his
voice muffled by his sleeve. "I should have known what they'd do when
they started to fail."

"How?" Karal asked acerbically. "Those were Urtho's weapons, not
Ma'ar's! How could you have known what they were going to do? Foresight? When not even the Foreseers were able to give us decent advice?" One red eye emerged from the shelter of An'desha's sleeve.

"But-" he began.

"But, nothing," Karal said with great firmness. "You aren't a Foreseer,
and you don't have Urtho's memories, you have Ma'ar's. And if you'd go
walk the Moonpaths, you'd find out from the leshy'a that I'm right."
An'desha winced, blanching, which looked quite interesting though
Altra's eyes.

"I can't-" he began.

Karal fixed him with what he hoped was a stern gaze, even though he
couldn't feel his eyes responding the way they should. "That sounds
exactly like what someone who's been thrown says," he replied. "What do
you do when a horse throws you?"

"You get back on," An'desha said faintly, "but-"

"You've already used 'but' too many times." Karal patted his elbow. "Try saying, 'all right' instead."

"All right," An'desha replied obediently, then realized he'd been
tricked. Karal wasn't about to let him off.

"Go," he said, and got unsteadily to his feet again. Instead of looking
down, he sensed that his head was in a position of looking out, echoing
Altra's head-posture. "Go walk the Moonpaths. I want you to, Lo'isha
wants you to. That ought to be reason enough, right there." Having
finished what he had to say, and having partly tricked An'desha into
agreement, he left and returned to his own pallet, far from the others,
where he sank down onto it, exhausted by holding back his own emotions,
and cried himself to sleep.

"Karal." He looked around, startled. He wasn't in his bed in the Tower
anymore; he was standing in the middle of-of nowhere he recognized.
There was opalescent mist all around him, and a path of softly glowing
silver sand beneath his feet.

Not only that, but it was his own eyes that he was looking out of, not
Altra's.

Where was he? This wasn't like any dream he had ever had before. In
fact, it was rather like the descriptions that An'desha had given him of the Moonpaths. But that was a place that only Shin'a'in could reach,
wasn't it?

Wasn't it?

"Of course not," said that voice again, teasingly familiar.

"Anyone can come here, they just see it differently. But Altra thought
that after all you've been through, you probably wouldn't want to visit
Sunheart for a little." This time, when he turned around, there was
someone there-or rather, four someones, two male and two female.

Two of them, the ones standing hand-in-hand, with vague bird-forms
swirling about them, he recognized immediately.

"Tre'valen!" he exclaimed "Dawnfire! But-"

"Oh, heavens, you didn't think we'd burned up or some such nonsense, did you?" Dawnfire laughed. "It takes more than a storm of mage-energy to destroy a spirit! We just lost the parts of ourselves that held us in your world, that's all."

"You did?" said someone else, incredulously, "That's all?" Karal found,
without any surprise at all, that An'desha had somehow come to stand
beside him. "But, why didn't you come back when I called you then?"

"Because-well-we can't." Tre'valen actually looked shamefaced. "I'm
afraid that we overstepped the bounds of what we were actually permitted to do to help you. The Stareyed wasn't precisely put out, but…

Dawnfire interrupted him. "You'll have to come here to meet us from now
on," she said ruefully. "But if you're going to be a shaman, you ought
to get all the practice you can in walking the Moonpaths anyway."

"All I can think of is how glad I am that I didn't-" An'desha began, but it was the strange young man that interrupted him this time. He looked very familiar, but Karal could not imagine why. Thin and not
particularly muscular, but with a build that suggested agility, he had
sandy brown hair that kept flopping into his blue eyes, and a friendly,
cheerful manner.

"Nothing you did or didn't do made any difference in what happened to
us, An'desha," the young man said. "Part of it was purest chance, and
the rest was that we took on more than we had any right to think we
could handle. And we managed to carry it off anyway. We dared. Right,
Karal?" At this point, Karal had an idea that he knew who the young man
was, and he gave voice to it. "Right-Florian," he replied, and was
rewarded by a wink, a flash of a grin, and a nod. "But if this is where
all of you came after-where are Vanyel, Stefen, and Yfandes?"

"Free of the forest for one thing, and high time, too, if you ask me,"
Florian replied. "And probably if you ask them. I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time, but I suspect they were stuck there a lot
longer than they thought they would be." Karal hadn't the faintest idea
what Florian was talking about, and some of his bewilderment must have
shown on his face. Florian chuckled.

"Never mind," he said. "Basically, they've made decisions about their
destinations, and they didn't have a lot of time to make sure they got
properly placed, so they've already gone on. I can't tell you what they
decided, but it's going to be fine. As for me," he continued with a
wink, "I've made mine, too, but I wasn't so picky. It should be obvious
if you think about it, but don't tell any Heralds, all right?" Karal
nodded solemnly; Florian's decision was obvious, though he doubted that
his friend was going to look anything like he did at the moment when he
returned to the world.

Then again, maybe he would. Karal branded that face into his memory. If
in fifteen or twenty years' time, Karal--or rather, Altra-saw a Herald
who looked like this, they would both know who it was.

I'd better remember that he won't remember, though, and not go rushing
up to him and greet him as my long-lost friend.

Even though that would be precisely what he was.

"Florian-" he faltered, and continued. "I've never had a friend like
you."

"Well, you'll have one again in time," the irrepressible Florian
interrupted. Evidently he was in no mood for sorrowful good-byes or
recriminations. He cut short any other attempts at speech by embracing
his friends. "Now, you go back to Valdemar and get into as much mischief as possible with Natoli, and I'll go take care of my business, and eventually we'll meet again. It's not 'good-bye', Karal, it's 'see you later'. All right?" What else could he do but agree, and return the hearty embrace?

With a cheery wave, Florian faded into the mist, and was gone, leaving
Karal behind with tears in his eyes and a smile on his lips.

Now he was alone with An'desha and the old woman.

This must be Need, he realized, listening to her give An'desha some tart and intelligent pieces of advice. "And as for you, young man," she said at last, turning her clever gaze on him, "I heartily agree with that young scamp, Florian. You're too sober by half, and just because you can't see things for yourself, that's no reason to go back to that
gloomy country of yours and sit in a corner and mope. Go get into
mischief with that young lady of yours; I had plenty of apprentices like her in my time, and I suspect she'll keep you hopping and she won't let you feel sorry for yourself."

"Probably not, my lady," he replied politely, thinking that her
assessment of Natoli was remarkably accurate for someone who didn't
actually know her.

"Now, since you asked earlier, as for me, I'm taking a long-delayed
rest. Maybe you'll see me and maybe you won't, but I'll be damned if I
ever go sticking myself into a piece of steel again!" She gave both of
them a brief hug. "Now, you both stop ruining good pillows with salt
water, and go and get some living done." And with that, she turned and
stalked off into the mist, leaving him and An'desha alone. Tre'valen and Dawnfire had already vanished while their attention was on Need.

"Now what?" he asked.

He looked at his friend, who shrugged, but with some of his old spirit
back. "I suppose we'd better do as she says," An'desha said. "You know
her. If we don't, she's likely to turn around and kick us out." He toed
the soft silver sand for a moment, then added, "I'm glad you made me
come here."

"I'm glad you let me," Karal replied, and smiled, feeling more peace in
his heart than he had ever expected to have again. "Now, let's go home."

Karal looked back through Altra's eyes, over the tail of his Shin'a'in
riding horse, a lovely and graceful palfrey. It felt very strange not to be riding Florian, but he supposed that he would get used to it after a while. Firesong rode behind him, supported by a saddle that the
Shin'a'in used for riders who were ill or disabled, watching everything
around him with his eyes shining behind the eye-holes of the mask
covering his half-healed face. Firesong's mask was a wonder, not only
because it was as extravagant and beautiful as one of his elaborate
robes, but because he and Lyam had made it of materials they had
scavenged from things in the Tower during the fortnight they had waited.

With a base of leather and adorned with bits of crystal, wire, and
feathers that Aya himself had carefully pulled from his tail and brought to Firesong while he still lay half-healed in his bed, it probably would have fetched a small fortune from a collector of such things. But Firesong was dissatisfied with it, and was already designing new ones.

All around them, the Plains were blooming in a way that the Shin'a'in
said they had not seen since the Star-Eyed herself walked there. One
could hardly see the grass for the flowers, which painted the landscape
in wide swathes of color. The land had gone from deepest winter to the
heart of spring, all in the space of a fortnight. Through Altra's eyes,
Karal took in the incredible beauty with a sense of awe and wonder.
According to the messages that Altra had brought from Solaris in Karse,
all their friends in Haven, and Elspeth in Hardorn, the phenomenon was
not confined to the Plains. All the world was in blossom, as if to make
up for the ravages of the Storms.

Sejanes and An'desha had been working to discover just how magic
operated, and as soon as he was able, Firesong had joined them. It had
not been long before they discovered that there were no ley-lines
anymore, no nodes, no huge reserves of mage-power. Magical energy had
been dispersed fairly evenly across the landscape; and there wouldn't be any large magics for a very long time. That meant no Gates, of course, but it was no hardship to ride through a countryside where the sun shone down with kindly benevolence, where birds serenaded every step of the way, and there was such an all-pervasive perfume of flowers, both night-and day-blooming, that it even permeated their dreams at night. And once the clever Kaled'a'in found the means to make the carry-baskets light using the small magics that still worked, they would make the rest of their journey by air.

Karal had been given the choice of going home to Karse-a shorter journey by far--or back to Valdemar. But when all was said and done, it had not been a difficult choice. One of the first messages from Solaris had been strictly for him, commending his actions, and asking him if he would, as a personal favor to her, resume his work in Valdemar both as the Karsite envoy and as the head of the Temple outside Karse. "With the visible evidence of your sacrifice," she had written, "no one in Valdemar will question your authority. Additionally, you will be dealing with the representatives of Iftel-creatures I confess I find somewhat unnerving.

The Sunlord has decreed some odd things in Iftel, and I frankly do not
think that outside of you there is a single Priest in the entire Temple
who could treat these peoples as anything other than heretics. I do not
want to offend these new brothers and sisters in any way, but I fear
that if I assigned anyone else to Valdemar and Iftel, there would be
blood spilled before long. However, if you want to come home, I will
understand, and find a way to cope." The message had come on the day
when they were all deciding whether to go to their homes or back to
Haven.

Tarm and Lyam had elected to return to k'leshya, which was no surprise
at all. Silverfox and Firesong, however, were going with them. Karal had half expected Firesong, at least, to want to return to his own people, but the Adept had smiled behind his mask and simply shaken his head, the crystals and bits of metal dangling from the mask tinkling softly.

"No one remembers what I looked like before in k'leshya, he said
quietly. "And-besides, Silverfox wants to be there, and it is a familiar Vale." It was plain in his voice, burned lips or not, that being with Silverfox was the primary reason.

An'desha rode with them, but he would not be leaving the Plains. He had
elected to remain and study with Lo'isha, taking the vows of the shaman.

Karal had been surprised at that as well, especially as he had been
earnestly practicing magic alongside Sejanes and Firesong during the
time that they waited for their hosts to put a caravan together for
them.

"There is no prohibition on magic among the Shin'a'in now," An'desha
explained with a chuckle. "There is no reason for one. I suspect that
Lo'isha has it in mind for me to be the teacher to the new mages among
us, in time. I should like that," he finished softly, with a tone of
contentment in his voice that Karal had never heard before. "Ma'ar in all of his incarnations gave nothing of himself. I shall perhaps be able to balance that, eventually." So Lo'isha and An'desha would leave them at the edge of the Plains, and Silverfox, Firesong, Tarm, and Lyam at k'leshya Vale. Master Levy and Sejanes were going on, of course, and
they would be joined by the Heralds who had carried the messages from
Haven telling the mages and rulers of other lands how to keep their
nodes from going rogue.

And Karal would be going with them. After all the advice from the
spirits on the Moonpaths he was hardly surprised when Natoli sent him a message of her own, asking him to come back to Valdemar. "I can be your eyes, too," she had written. "And you can be my good sense, which I seem to have a distinct lack of. I think I need you." Confused grammar, but not confused thoughts. He had been afraid for a little that despite the surety of others, she might not want to see him as less than he had been; he knew now that he should have given her more credit than that.

So he would be going on with Master Levy and Sejanes; back to duty, back to love. But most of all, back to a place he was already thinking of as home.

Altra would stay with him to provide him with "eyes," but he had the
love of fiends, awareness of himself, and hope for the future to give
him vision, vision without sight, perhaps, but as true and clear as
anyone could imagine.