Five

After three days of what could only be described as endurance riding, Karal was finally getting used to the pace. He was also getting used to Rubrik, and it seemed that their escort was getting accustomed to them as well. His formal manner loosened a bit, and during the fourth day of travel, he began to talk with Karal directly.

At that point, Karal had to revise his opinion of their escort sharply upward, for Rubrik was even more of a scholar than he had guessed. He spoke four languages besides his own, and his rattling on about the geography, husbandry, and economics of the places they passed was no mere prattling to fill empty ears. He knew this area and the conditions in it as well as its own overlords did.

And that only made Karal more curious than before. Who was this man, that he had so much information at his very fingertips? Surely he had not memorized it just to impress or occupy them.

When they left the home of the lady Guard Commander, clad in riding gear that had been freshly washed and cleaned by the lady's servants, gray skies threatened rain. The rain did not actually materialize in the morning or even the early afternoon, but toward late afternoon the clouds thickened, and the wind picked up. Ulrich's joints hurt him quite a bit at that point, so they actually stopped early for once, at least two marks before sunset.

Their stopping place was yet another inn, this one with a courtyard surrounded on three sides by the inn itself, and on the fourth by the stable. A gate in the middle of the stable led into the courtyard, and this arrangement cut the wind completely. Ulrich descended from his saddle with a gasp of pain, and Rubrik was concerned enough to ask the Priest if he thought he would require the services of a Healer.

"Not unless your Healer can give me the body of a man three decades my junior," Ulrich replied with a ghost of a smile. "No, this is simply the result of old age. I shall retire to my bed with a hot brick and some of your salve, and with luck, this rain will move on so that we can follow suit as soon as possible."

But the rain didn't move on—in fact, no sooner had Karal seen his master settled into a warming bed than it began to drizzle.

The taproom of the inn was mostly empty; the miserable weather was probably convincing people to stay by their own hearths tonight. There was a good fire in the fireplace, though, quite enough to take the chill out of the air, and on the whole it was a pleasant place, all of age-and smoke-blackened wood. Heavy beams supported the ceiling, and below their shelter, gently curved tables and benches polished to satin smoothness were arranged in an arc around the fire. As the drizzle turned into a real thunderstorm, Karal found a perch at a window-seat table and watched the lightning dance toward the inn through the tiny panes of a leaded window.

"Impressive, isn't it?"

The eyes of Rubrik's reflection met his in the dark and bubbly window glass. The man smiled, and Karal smiled tentatively back.

"Would you prefer I left you to your meditations?" Rubrik asked politely.

Karal shook his head. "Not really," he replied. "You can join me, if you like. I've always been fascinated by storms—when I was a boy at an inn like this one, I used to sneak away and hide in the hayloft to watch them move in."

"And let me guess—you used, as an excuse to go to the stable in the first place, that the horses were frightened by the thunder and needed soothing, no doubt," Rubrik hazarded, and grinned, taking the seat on the other side of the table. "My father never believed that one, either, but his stableman was always on my side and backed me up with specious tales of how I had kept the prize mounts from hurting themselves in a panic."

Karal realized that at last their escort had just let something fall about his own past. Up until now Rubrik had been very closemouthed about anything of a personal nature. His father's stableman. So that means he comes from a well-to-do family, if not of noble blood. So his father was no mere farmer as he implied. He responded in kind. "My father never minded too much; there's less work at an inn during bad weather. It's a lot easier for people to stay at home, watch their own fires, and drink their own beer. And of course, once the few travelers who wanted to try and beat the storm got in, no one else would arrive until it was over, so we stableboys didn't have much to do either after we'd dealt with their beasts." There. It was out. If Rubrik was going to be offended by his low birth—

"That's probably the only time you didn't have much to do," Rubrik said, with a conspiratorial grin. "I've always felt a little sorry for inn folk during wonderful weather. They never get a holiday like the rest of us do. It hardly seems fair, does it, that in the very best of weather, when everyone else is out enjoying themselves, people in an inn have to work three times as hard tending to the holiday-makers? I would guess that storm watching was the closest thing to a holiday you ever got."

Karal chuckled and brightened. "I never thought about it, actually. It wasn't as bad as you might think, so long as you like horses. Father never made it easier on me than it was for the other horseboys, but he was a good and just taskmaster." He clasped his hands together on the tabletop and stared out at the rain. "I never really saw the heavy work, when it came to that; I wasn't old enough for anything other than light chores, like grooming. The Sun-priests took me at the Feast of the Children when I was nine, so I was never big enough to do heavy work."

Rubrik looked at Karal for a moment, then stared out at the lightning. The silence between them grew heavy, and Karal sensed that he was about to ask something that he thought might be sensitive.

Probably something about us, about Karse and the Sun-priests. That's not a problem; Ulrich already told me what I can't say. No reason to avoid his questions, especially not if the information he wants is common knowledge at home. I think he's been looking for an excuse to talk to me alone, figuring that I will be less wary than Ulrich. He felt himself tense a little. He would have to be very canny with this man. It would be easy to trust him; hard to remember to watch what he said.

Rubrik coughed politely. "I—ah—suppose you realize we have all kinds of stories, probably ridiculous, about the reasons why the Sun-priests took Karsite children—and what they did with them afterward—"

Karal only sighed, then rested his chin in his hand. "The stories probably aren't any worse than the truth," he said at last.

Rubrik nodded and waited for him to go on. Encouraged, Karal told him all about his own childhood, what there was of it—how the Priests had taken him, how he had been educated, and how, finally, Ulrich had singled him out as his protege. He told their escort about the Fires, too, and caught an odd expression on his face, as if what Karal had told him only confirmed something horrible that he already knew.

"The children taken are either extremely intelligent; intelligence that would be wasted in a menial position, or are children with the God-granted ability to use magic, of course. Ulrich told me later that I had both qualifications, but my ability to use magic is only a potential, rather than an active thing. He called me a 'channel,' but I've never found out what that means, exactly. I was absolutely terrified that at some point I'd start showing witch-powers like my uncles did, and a Black-robe Priest would come for me and that I'd end up going to the Fires," he concluded. "But I never did—though in one sense, I suppose, a Black-robe Priest did come for me."

Rubrik waited for him to say something; out of pure mischief he held his peace. Finally the man gave up. "Well?" he said. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Karal grinned; at least this would be one thing he could surprise the man with. "Ulrich was a Black-robe—that is to say, a Demon-Summoner—before Her Holiness Solaris made the Black-robe nothing more than a rank. And now, of course, there aren't any Fires. The Cleansing ceremony has gone back to what it used to be. Ulrich and I found the original Rite in one of the ancient Litany Books." He didn't make Rubrik ask for the answer this time. "It's a Rite of Passage, that's what it originally was, before it was perverted; children who are about to become adult bring something symbolic of their childhood to be burned as a sign that they are ready to take on adult responsibilities. Ulrich says it's easy to change holidays and rituals to suit a purpose, since they're usually subjective anyway. Harvest festivals and fertility rites are coming back, too, the way they were a long time ago."

Rubrik took all this in thoughtfully. "Solaris has made many changes, then?"

"Her Holiness certainly has! Mostly she has reversed changes that had been made by corrupt Priests seeking nothing more than power," Karal corrected. He wasn't certain why, but for some reason he felt that point needed to be absolutely clear. Solaris was not some kind of wild-eyed revolutionary, despite what her critics claimed; what she had done in the Temple thus far was restoration, not revolution. "Ulrich is not precisely certain how long things have been wrong, but we know that it has been several centuries at the least. True miracles ceased, and the illusions of miracles were substituted. The God-granted power of magic that should have been devoted to the well-being of Vkandis' people and to His glory was perverted into the use of that power to bring temporal power and wealth to the temple and the Priests. And Vkandis is very real, not an imaginary God like some people have!"

Rubrik smiled, but not mockingly. "I know."

Oddly enough, Karal believed him. "Ulrich believes we will know the date the corruption started when we learn just when the rank of Black-robe Priests was created. They were the heart and soul of the corruption."

Lightning lashed the top of a tree not too far away_; Karal winced at the thunder but enjoyed the atavistic thrill it sent up his spine. And I am glad to be in here, and not out there.

"I thought you said that Ulrich was a Black-robe," Rubrik replied, slowly. "Your robes are still black, in fact."

"He was," Karal agreed. "His duty in the former days, according to the Writ and Rule, was to summon demons on the orders of the Son of the Sun and send them against the enemies of Karse. It was not a duty he took any pleasure in. He also frequently brought danger down on himself by refusing to counterfeit miracles." He turned his head a little so that his eyes met Rubrik's. "He showed me every counterfeit he knew, so that I would not be taken in by the tricks of the higher-ranked Priests," he told the man, whose eyes widened at his serious tone. "And that alone might have gotten him burned had I betrayed him. Some of the tricks were so simple anyone who paid attention could have seen through them—but that's the power of belief."

He turned his attention back to the storm. There were other things Rubrik might do well to learn about Ulrich, but Karal would rather that it was his master who told the Valdemaran.

Besides, how could I tell him about the times that Ulrich returned from a summoning, troubled and heartsore—how he hinted that the definition of "enemies of Karse" was becoming broader and broader! No, that should come from my master and not from me. I do not want this Valdemaran to think that I am in the habit of betraying my mentor's confidences.

"You said something about Solaris changing all that," Rubrik ventured, after several long moments filled only by the boom of thunder and the pounding of rain on the roof. "Was that when she became the head of Vkandis' religion?"

Karal nodded, and smiled a little. This was the part of the tale he really enjoyed. "That was what gave her the office, in fact. It was a miracle—a real one, and no fakery. I was there, I saw it myself. For that matter, so was Ulrich, and he is certainly an expert at spotting something that was not a God-produced miracle. I do not believe that there is any kind of fakery, either slight-of-hand and illusion, or magic masquerading as a miracle, that he cannot detect."

It had been a very strange day to begin with; the day of the Fire Kindling Ceremony at Midwinter, when all the fires of Karse were relit from the ones ignited on the altars of Vkandis. It should have been bitter cold—

"It was the strangest Midwinter Day I have ever seen," he said slowly. "Hot—terribly hot and dry. Hot enough that the Priests had all taken out their summer robes for the Fire Kindling Ceremony. There was not a single cloud in the sky above the city, but outside the city the sky was covered with dull gray clouds, from horizon to horizon. Ulrich and I were at the front of the Processional; Solaris was no more than three people away from Ulrich." He closed his eyes for a moment, picturing it, and chose his words carefully, trying to set the scene for his listener. "We Priests and novices surrounded the High Altar in a semicircle; the beam of sunlight—called the Lance of Hope—shining through the Eye in the ceiling above us slowly moved toward the pile of fragrant woods and incense on the Altar. The golden statue of Vkandis-In-Glory, wearing the Crown of Prophecy, shone like the sun itself behind the Altar, and Lastem—the False Son—stood beside it, ready to kindle the flames by magic if the sunlight didn't do the trick promptly enough."

Rubrik nodded. "I take it that this was a fairly common practice?"

Karal snorted with disgust. "I never once saw the False Son bring forth a single true miracle. For that matter, he was so feeble in magic that the most he could do was to kindle flame in very dry, oily tinder. Well, that day, he never got the chance for his deceptions."

He turned toward Rubrik, and lowered his voice like a true storyteller. "Imagine it for yourself—the crowd of worshipers filling the temple, the golden statue of Vkandis shining behind the Altar and the False Son standing beside it like a fat, black spider. The Processional ended just as the beam of sunlight crept up to the Altar platform; Solaris was no more than five paces away, watching, not the False Son, but the beam of light, her face mirroring her ecstasy."

Was that a little too florid? No, I don't think so.

"Most of the important Priests only looked bored, though, on what should be an important day for them, the Holiest of all of Vkandis' Holy Days. They couldn't wait to get back to the Cloister and the feast that waited there for them." Ulrich and a great many of the low-ranked Priests avoided the feast when they could. It was little more than an occasion for those in favor with the Son of the Sun to lord it over those who were not. Hardly Ulrich's choice of a way to spend a Holy Day. He preferred to spend his rare free time reading.

"The beam of sunlight slowly moved onto the Altar itself, while the Children's Choir sang. I saw the False Son's hands moving as he prepared to trigger the fire-starting spell if the wood didn't catch. Then, just before the beam touched the kindling in the middle of the Altar—"

As if he had triggered it himself, a tremendous bolt of lightning lanced down right beside the inn, and as they both jumped and Karal squeaked, the thunder deafened them and everyone else inside the inn.

He sat there for a moment, waiting for his ears to clear, and very grateful that he had not been looking out the window at that moment. If he had, he'd have been blinded!

Rubrik laughed shakily. "Next time, tell me when you are going to produce a surprise to liven up your tale!"

"I'm not responsible for that one!" Karal retorted, with a shaky chuckle of his own. "Perhaps you ought to ask Vkandis if He has widened His lands to include Valdemar! Because that was precisely what happened in the Temple—a bolt of lightning shot down through the opening in the Temple's roof, out of the cloudless sky, and completely evaporated the False Son of the Sun."

Rubrik stared at him skeptically, as if he suspected that this was just more tale-telling.

But Karal shook his head emphatically. "I promise you, I was there, and so was Ulrich. He'll corroborate what I've said. There was literally nothing left but the man's smoking vestments and boots, too—I've never seen anything like it, and neither had anyone else. But that wasn't the end of the miracle, it was only the beginning!"

"What next?" Rubrik asked, his tone conveying that even if he was not quite convinced, he was certain that Karal was telling the truth as he saw it.

"Next, was that when we could see again, every stone column in the Temple had been turned upside down, and since they all had carvings on them, it was pretty obvious that they'd been inverted. We didn't know it at the time, but we found out later that every cloud vanished from over the whole of Karse, and the First Fires on every Altar blazed up and burned for a full week without any additional fuel." He left out the other, smaller miracles—about the children waiting to be burned who had vanished from the hands of the Black-robes, only to be discovered long afterward, hidden in the homes of their families. He eliminated the story of the Priest's Staffs—how some of the staffs turned brittle and disintegrated at a touch, while others put out green branches covered with flowers.

And the Staffs that turned to dust were the ones that belonged to the False Son's favorites and cronies, and those Black-robes who had truly enjoyed the demon-summoning and the burnings.... He himself had held Ulrich's Staff, which had so many tiny red flowers covering the branches at the top that the wood could scarcely be seen. It had remained that way for a week, the flowers sending out a heady perfume. Ulrich and every other possessor of a flowering Staff had planted their Staffs in the various Temple meditation gardens, where they remained as flowering bushes, living reminders of the day of the miracles.

"But none of that would have gotten Solaris made Son of the Sun," he continued. "No woman had ever been named Son of the Sun, the very idea was absurd. No, if that had been all that happened, the Priests would have convened and elected a new Son, perhaps one a little more pious than the old one, but still—"

"It would have been business as usual," Rubrik supplied, his ironic nod showing that he understood the situation all too well. "So what did happen?"

"Another miracle. The last, and greatest of all. Silence hung over the entire Temple, for the worshipers were too stunned to cry out or even move. Then, before anyone could recover enough to say or do anything to break that silence, the golden statue of Vkandis began to move." He closed his eyes to picture it again in his mind, and described the vivid memory as best he could. "It moved exactly like a living man—there was nothing stilted or jerky about the way that it looked about, then stepped slowly down out of the niche behind the Altar. That convinced me it couldn't be some mechanical thing substituted for the real statue. I remember staring up at it, and thinking how much like a man it was—the skin moved properly over the muscles; the muscles rippled as it stepped over the Altar and stopped in front of Solaris. She was staring up at it, with that same enraptured expression on her face, even though most of the Priests were groveling and babbling out a litany of every sin they'd ever committed."

That had been rather funny, actually. For some reason, it never occurred to him to be afraid of the image, and there were a few more, like Solaris and Ulrich, who actually seemed to be in a trance of ecstasy as they gazed upon it. The face of the statue wore a look of complete serenity, as it always had—yet there seemed to be a hint of good humor in the eyes, a ghost of a smile about the lips, as if Vkandis found the groveling Priests just as funny as Karal did.

"The statue took the Crown of Prophecy off its own head; once the Crown was in its hands, it shrank. It dwindled until it was small enough to fit a human. Then the statue bent down and placed the Crown on Solaris' head."

The eyes of the image and of Solaris had met and locked. Something passed between them; Karal didn't know what it was, and on the whole, he would really rather not find out. I'm just not ready for the personal attentions of Vkandis. I would be very happy to stay with Ulrich and work researching the old Rites and never have Him notice me.

"Then the image went back to the pedestal behind the Altar; that was when the fire there on the Altar in front of it blazed up so quickly and so high we thought another lightning bolt had hit it. When the flames died down so we could see the niche again, the statue was exactly as it had been, except that it wasn't wearing the Crown anymore. Solaris was."

"And you're sure that there was no trickery involved?" Rubrik persisted.

Karal nodded. "Absolutely. It wasn't an illusion, or how would Solaris have gotten the Crown? It wasn't a mechanical device, because no mechanical could have moved as the statue did. And besides that, how would a mechanical creature make the Crown shrink like that? And Ulrich says it definitely wasn't human magic, or he would have known immediately; even without summoning demons, he's still one of the most powerful mages in the Priesthood. None of us have ever seen Solaris work any magic, before or since, except for the demon-summoning she was required to perform because she was a Black-robe. Ulrich says he doesn't see how any mage could have delivered a lightning strike like that, animate the statue, and light the First Fire and still be standing afterward. Even if she or a confederate, or even a number of conspirators, could have done all that with magic, there's still one question—how would she have gotten the Crown off the statue, and shrunk it down to fit her? The Crown wasn't just some piece of jewelry that had been made to fit the statue—it was part of the statue, part of the original casting. The Crown is part of the statue's head. It was deliberately cast that way to discourage thieves."

"Huh." Rubrik stared at the rain which was coming down in a solid sheet. Karal watched his expression very carefully, trying to guess his thoughts. "Well," he said, very slowly, "I would have said that I didn't believe in miracles, if I hadn't seen one or two lately with my own eyes. Smallish ones, mind, compared to your moving statues and shrinking Crowns, but they definitely qualified." He paused, and Karal had the sense that he was choosing his words with the utmost care. "The Lady-Goddess of the Hawkbrothers and Shin'a'in seems to intervene now and then on behalf of her own people, so why not the Sunlord, right?"

Karal nodded cautiously. He wasn't entirely certain he ought to be agreeing to anything that compared Vkandis with some outlandish heathen Goddess—but Rubrik said he'd seen this Goddess working miracles....

Vkandis was supposed to have a Goddess-Consort in the oldest records, but she seemed to have gotten misplaced somewhere far back in the past. Or had the Priests in that far past been right to eliminate her?

This was getting more confusing by the moment. "Goddess?" he replied weakly. "What Goddess?"

Rubrik shook his head, and chuckled. "Oh, this theology business is too much for a simple soul like me! Let me order us some dinner, and you tell me just what Solaris did once she had that crown on her head, all right?"

Karal agreed to that with relief. Rubrik summoned a serving-girl, who eyed Karal in a way that made him blush and wish secretly that he wasn't sharing a room with his master. He was only a novice; he hadn't taken any oaths yet, much less oaths of celibacy and chastity....

Rubrik must have ordered something that the kitchen already had prepared, for the girl returned with laden platters in short order. Karal's stomach growled as the aroma of hot sausage pie hit his nose. The scent was unfamiliar, as unfamiliar as most of the Valdemaran food, but even if he hadn't been starving, it would have been enticing. He felt ready to eat the pie and the plate it was baked in.

Rubrik dug into his own portion without hesitation. "So," he said, gesturing with a fork, "what did your Solaris do next?"

"There was no question of naming anyone else the Son of the Sun, of course," Karal replied, around a mouthful of sausage and crust. He swallowed; the pie was wonderful, and the spices weren't too different from the ones used at home. "Everyone who would have protested was there for the Miracles, and they were terrified that any more miracles would target them. Solaris was invested right then and there with the White Robes—she already had a Crown—and the acolytes swept what was left of the False Son out with the ashes of last year's Fire. The next day she called a convocation, and told everyone that the duties of the Black-robes would change from that moment. She ordered that Black-robes would retain their rank, but they would serve exactly the same duties as the Red-robe Priests. Demon-summoning was declared anathema, forbidden, and the texts that taught the means of summoning the creatures were to be burned."

"That's a good start, though normally I don't hold with burning books," Rubrik observed. "But destroying something so open to misuse instead of burning innocent people was a pretty good way of beginning her rule."

Karal nodded enthusiastically and had another couple of bites before continuing. "She said that she had been having visions for some time now, and that the event in the Temple merely confirmed that her visions had been from Vkandis and not mere dreaming and vainglory. She told us all that she had been shown that the ways of the Writ and Rule were not the ancient and true ways of worship."

"I'd hardly expect her to say anything else," Rubrik pointed out dryly. "If she was going to establish herself as an authority, she would have to shake up things in your Temple right from the beginning. First day."

Karal bit his tongue to keep from making a sharp retort, and took a little time eating before continuing, lest he say something he shouldn't. No matter what Solaris was, one thing she wasn't was a mere political creature. Yes, she understood politics, but it was only to take them into account. When politics didn't agree with what she was going to do, she worked around them.

"She made quite a few changes in the first week," he told the Valdemaran, "And later, when Ulrich and I were doing research into the older ways, we found out that the changes she had made were nothing more than a reestablishment of those ancient paths. 'The Sunlord has always been a God of life, not destruction,' she said. 'His Fire is the life-giving Fire of the Sun, not the Fires that eat the lives of children.' She decreed an end to the Cleansing Ceremonies as we knew them. She declared the Feast of the Children to be a time of testing youngsters for their powers and intelligence, but ordered that no child was to be dragged away from its family; children must come to the Temple by consent of their families and their own will." He answered Rubrik's slightly raised eyebrow with a sardonic smile of his own. "She also pointed out that in families with many children and limited resources, telling the child and its parents that from now on the Priesthood would feed and clothe it would get them to at least give the Cloisters a try. I have to admit that I was fed and housed better than my parents could afford when I was in the Cloisters, and on the whole I had less work to do. I'm told now that children sometimes cry when they aren't taken, instead of crying when they are."

"Ah," Rubrik said, with a twitch of his lips. "As we say in Valdemar, presenting the apple instead of the stick."

"Precisely." He finished off his portion of pie and took a long swallow of ale. "The changes she made with the children and the novices were that they were to be allowed full contact with their families and annual leave to visit them if they wished, just as if they were recruits in the Army. But that all came later; it was part of the changes she made that were really restorations of the old ways."

"The old ways..." Rubrik finished his own food thoughtfully. "So, just how did she come to know all these 'old ways'? More visions?"

Karal laughed. "Oh, no, not at all! She appointed a number of friends of hers among the former Black-robes to find them in the archives!"

"Don't tell me—" Rubrik said quickly, holding up his free hand. "One of the places where she used to spend a lot of her free time was the archives, right? And I already know that she is a linguist and a scholar and can read all the oldest records for herself. So that was how she just happened to know that the 'old ways' weren't exactly the same as your current—what did you call it?"

"The Writ and Rule." Karal shrugged. "I don't know, but does it really matter? The point is that she knew that there was a record of the old ways in the archives, and everything we found confirmed or added to what she had already declared. Ulrich was one of the former Black-robes she assigned to the archives, and since I was his secretary, I worked beside him."

The serving-girl came to clear away their empty plates, refill their cups, and bring them a dessert of fruit and cheese. Rubrik said nothing while she was there, and spent some time carefully cutting up an apple without continuing the conversation. "None of this ever got to Valdemar," he said at last. "We only heard that there had been some disturbance, and that suddenly the ruler of Karse was a woman. Then we learned nothing at all for a year or two." He looked up from his apple dissection, and cocked an eyebrow at Karal. "Is there any connection between your Solaris and the other woman that called herself 'the Prophet of Vkandis' about ten or fifteen years ago? The one that decided she was going to be the head of your army and damn near got herself a big chunk of Menmellith?"

Karal shook his head. "No—and in fact, that woman is the reason the original Crown of Prophecy went missing. It was lost with her when she vanished."

No point in getting into that; the story was much too complicated. And if Rubrik did not know the part of Solaris' story that his own countrywoman Talia figured so prominently in—he wasn't as well-informed as Karal had thought.

Rubrik ate his apple thoughtfully. "I can't imagine that the rest of your priesthood just rolled over like cowed dogs and let Solaris rule as she wanted."

Indeed they didn't, Karal thought quietly. But this was one of the subjects Ulrich had instructed him to say nothing about. There had been a great deal of opposition to Solaris' new Writ and Rules, and to her decrees as well. Not only from the Priests, either.

There had been plenty of people in Karse who liked the corrupt ways very much indeed. A number of the highly born resented the intrusion of the Priests into areas of governance they had always considered their private preserve. There had been a kind of understanding between the Priests and some of the nobles that certain—excesses—would be ignored if gifts "to the Temple" were valuable enough. There had been Priests who were as corrupt as some of those nobles; they had shared in those excesses.

Solaris put an end to those "understandings." And an end to the slave trade, to a profitable market in deadly intoxicants, and a number of other unsavory trades that had been ignored or even given tacit sanction by the Priests.

This did not earn her friends in some quarters.

There were Priests and the favorites of Priests who lost prestige and position with the change in stature of the Black-robes—those who were no longer permitted to call demons did not inspire the same fear. This didn't earn her any goodwill from those factions, either.

There were even those at the borders who wanted the demon-summoners back. At least when demons roamed the night, the bandits stayed hidden, and conducted their raids only by day, when it was somewhat easier to see them coming and to fight them. There were plenty of border dwellers who feared the Rethwellans, the Valdemarans, and the Hardornens on the other side of those borders, and wanted the demons and their summoners to keep the "foreigners" away.

The two years that followed the Miracle were not easy ones, and Solaris had fought a grim and mostly-silent battle against a number of enemies. But Karal was not going to tell Rubrik any of that. If the Valdemaran spies weren't good enough for their Queen to have learned that much, too bad. And if no one had bothered to inform this agent of the Queen of these things, that was not Karal's problem.

"So, at some point after Ancar stole his father's throne, he decided that Karse was an easy target, hmm?" Rubrik took the hint, restarting the conversation with something obvious.

Karal shrugged. "I suppose so. I've never talked to anyone from Hardorn. Those who were trying to escape went across your borders. I suppose they didn't want to chance the demons; they had no reason to know there weren't any demons anymore. All I know is that suddenly we had an army trying to run over the top of us. Solaris was very good at picking brilliant generals, but good generals were obviously not going to be enough. Ancar's fighters didn't seem—human."

"They weren't, exactly, anymore," Rubrik replied, and it was obvious from his expression that he was not going to elaborate on this point. Well, fine. So they both had things they weren't supposed to share.

"You should know the rest," Karal continued. "Solaris retreated to the Sun Tower and came back down with a new decree from the mouth of Vkandis Himself.

"Truce with Valdemar." That was a statement, not a question, but Karal nodded anyway.

And if the situation hadn't been so bad, that would have been the end of Solaris. As it was, Ancar's fighters and mages committed so many outrages that even her worst enemies were convinced that she was right. There hadn't been a single family in all of Karse that didn't know of someone who'd been affected. Torture and rapine were the least of the vile deeds Ancar's followers had perpetrated, although they in themselves were quite bad enough.

Rubrik shook his head with an expression of wry sympathy. "You know, when your messengers reached our people, and we were finally convinced that Solaris meant what she said, there were some of us who thought the world had surely come to an end. I mean, truce with Karse! How much crazier could things get? And most people were certain it wouldn't last."

A flicker of expression on Rubrik's face, quickly suppressed, told Karal that this man was in the group of those in Valdemar who had felt that way. "I don't imagine your people were terribly happy about the idea, especially anyone in your Guard."

Rubrik grimaced. "Well, when those Priest-mages of yours came north and helped hold Ancar's armies to a crawl, it pretty well convinced even the most skeptical that you meant to hold by the spirit of the truce and alliance as well as the letter of it. At this point, we've got acceptance—if a grudging acceptance—of the situation. There are still people who can't keep up with the changes in the land, though. So much has changed so quickly inside Valdemar—and outside her borders—that probably half of the population is in a whirl."

Karal sighed, and then caught himself in a yawn. How late was it, anyway? "I suppose you could say the same about us," he replied. "Except for two groups, that is."

Rubrik raised an eyebrow.

"Those who support Solaris without reservation, like Ulrich, purely because she is the Son of the Sun by Vkandis' Own hand," Karal said, "And those who are simply too young to have fought Valdemar personally, and so have no personal grudges to bear. When you're young enough, the world is new every day."

"Ah." Rubrik considered this for a moment—perhaps noting that Karal did not say which group he belonged in—and straightened a bit in his seat, stretching and flexing his shoulders. "And on that optimistic note, I suggest we both find a nice warm bed," he said.

Optimistic? Well, I suppose so—if you consider that he means that eventually all the old fossils will die and the new generation, presumably without the prejudices of the old, will take over. "That sounds like a good idea to me," Karal agreed. "And forgive me if I hope that your bad weather holds long enough to prevent us from leaving until the sun is properly above the horizon!"

Rubrik only laughed. "I won't promise anything," he replied. "But I think this is a wizard-storm, and if it is, it will be cleared up before midnight at the latest."

Karal sighed.

Ulrich was still awake when Karal came in, and Karal reported the whole conversation faithfully. As Ulrich's secretary, he had learned how to memorize long conversations verbatim, when they had been in a situation where taking notes would have been impolite or impolitic. Ulrich listened without comment, then nodded approval.

"You did very well," he told his protege. "You told him nothing he should not know—and perhaps, having been told of the Miracles by an eyewitness, he will be reporting them as fact rather than hearsay to his superiors."

Karal stretched his knotted muscles and grimaced. "Master, I have to tell you that although I do enjoy this man's company, I had almost rather be facing an armed enemy than have another of these conversations with him. He is very good, very subtle. I think that if he tried, he could probably have gotten much more out of me than I intended to tell him. I believe he was hoping for just this sort of opportunity to catch me alone and question me. He knows what will be good for Valdemar to know of Karse now, but if I spent too much more time in his presence I think it might be that I would tell him too much—or something he would misinterpret."

Ulrich considered this for a moment, staring into the fire in the tiny fireplace in their room. "I think you are probably right," he replied, his expression thoughtful, though not at all apprehensive. "It was probably not coincidental that he began asking all these questions of you at the moment when I was out of reach and earshot. I think that the next such conversation should include me."

Karal heaved a sigh of relief at that. He had been concentrating so hard on telling only the truth, and yet not all the truth, that he had not realized how tense he had been under Rubrik's scrutiny until he got back to the room he shared with his mentor. Now, he found he had to go through every stretching and relaxing exercise he knew just to get himself unknotted enough to sleep!

This Rubrik was subtle, very subtle. And although he had not consciously been aware of the fact, something instinctive had reacted to that. Among the Priests, "subtle" frequently meant "dangerous."

And among the Priests, "subtle" always meant that the man must never be underestimated.

But as Karal blew out the candle and climbed into his own bed, he found himself hoping only one thing—that in this case, "subtle" did not mean "treacherous" as well.

Six

Regrettably, Rubrik was right about the weather. A tap on their door at an absolutely unholy hour proved that the storm had cleared; before dawn, if not by midnight. Karal pried himself out of his warm cocoon of blankets with a groan of regret that was only slightly softened by the fact that the servants who woke them also brought breakfast along with wash water and a candle. A real breakfast this time, not just bread and drink.

I might be able to face the day, he decided, after a decent meal of eggs and bacon, hot bread and sweet honey-butter, with plenty of freshly pressed cider to wash it all down. The hastily-snatched meals on horseback tended to wear very thin, long before Rubrik would decree a halt for further food.

"I think that our escort has probably forgotten how much a young man needs to eat," Ulrich observed with an amused smile, as he watched Karal devour the remains of his mentor's breakfast as well as his own. "I shall remind him."

"Thank you, Master Ulrich," Karal said with real gratitude. "It's not as if he hasn't been very reasonable, but—"

"But he is probably as many years removed from the age at which one devours one's weight in food every day as I am," Ulrich replied. "One forgets."

Karal only smiled, and washed his hands and face clean of the sticky honey he had devoured so greedily. If there was one thing he had a weakness for, it was sweets.

Which means I'd better never take a real scholar's position, or I'll soon resemble Vkandis' own seat cushion.

"Are you sure you can ride?" he asked his mentor anxiously. Ulrich had been moving with the slow, deliberate care that meant his joints were still stiff. Karal had more than a duty to Ulrich as his mentor, he was under orders to make certain Ulrich remained healthy during his tenure as Karse's envoy.

He was fairly certain Ulrich was not aware of this, however.

Solaris had called Karal into her Presence just before they left, to make him promise he would take particular care of his mentor. One session with that formidable lady's will concentrated on him and him alone was more than enough. He could not imagine that the Eye of Vkandis Himself would concentrate any more force than did His earthly representative's. Karal did not ever want to report to her that Ulrich had come to any kind of grief.

"Oh, I shall live," the Priest said, sighing. Then he smiled wanly. "Don't be too concerned, Karal. These joint aches are not a sign of anything dangerous."

But Karal continued to stare at his mentor with a frown of worry on his face until Ulrich grimaced. "I swear to you that I will ask our escort to stop for the day if I need rest. Will that suit you?"

"I suppose it will have to," Karal told him, trying to sound as severe as one of his own instructors had, when he had tried to avoid making pledges. "Since I doubt I'm going to get anything more reasonable out of you."

But Ulrich only raised a quelling eyebrow at him. "Don't try to sound like Ophela, child; it doesn't suit either your years or your personality."

Suitably rebuked, Karal flushed with embarrassment and quickly turned his attention to his packing. Not that there was much to pack—most of what they would be needing at the Court had been sent on ahead with a merchant pack train, and should arrive shortly before they did. Ulrich had not wanted to attract attention by traveling with the number of wagons they would need to maintain their proper state as Officials of the Court. Wagons would mean armed guards, and guards would imply importance or value—and they would end up with the same problem that a large escort would have caused them.

By way of simultaneously showing his contrition and his rebellion, he packed up Ulrich's gear as well, before his mentor could get to it himself. Ulrich only raised his eyebrow even higher at this implication that he was too feeble to deal with it on his own.

With packs assembled, Karal shouldered both, and stepped aside for his master to lead the way out to the courtyard.

As usual, Rubrik was already there, waiting for them in the gray light of false dawn, this time already astride his lovely white horse. Karal fastened the packs behind Honeybee's saddle first, then Trenor's, and swung quickly up onto Trenor's back so that he could watch while Ulrich mounted.

At least Ulrich didn't seem to be in any great difficulty. Maybe he was overreacting.

And maybe I really don't ever want to have to face Her Holiness and confess to carelessness. Better safe than sorry, as the saying goes.

They were some few leagues down the road, when Rubrik pulled up his mount beside Ulrich, and motioned to Karal that he should stay abreast of them as well. "I had a rather interesting conversation with your young secretary last night," he said, and waited for Ulrich's reply.

"I know," Ulrich said calmly. "He told me."

"I rather thought he might," came Rubrik's amused response. "You and your leader have chosen well. If I may venture a guess, he told me exactly what he was permitted to—no lies, but nothing more and nothing less than what he had been granted leave to reveal."

Ulrich laughed out loud. "Very good, friend! And now, since your appetite—or that of whomever it is you are reporting to—has been whetted, you are coming to me for more information than you think he is allowed to give, in the hopes that I have permission to tell you more. And knowing that young Karal would not have been permitted to tell you anything if we had not intended for you to come to me."

Rubrik made a slight bow from the saddle, full of amused irony. "Now that we have both agreed that we are too clever for the usual diplomatic half-truths, if you will allow me to give you a starting point, perhaps you can tell me how the Karsites reacted to the alliance with Valdemar, especially after we got rid of Ancar. Do feel free to ignore anything you haven't got leave to answer."

"I shall," the Priest replied with urbane courtesy. Then Ulrich nodded, as if to himself, and while the steady sound of hoofbeats filled the silence, spent a moment in thought. "Many of the Karsites felt the alliance would not endure past that moment," he replied. "There was a sizable number, though not a majority, who believed that the alliance had never been a good idea. But then the army of the Empire appeared, already well into Hardorn, and heading for Karse and Valdemar."

Rubrik snorted mirthlessly. "Indeed. An unpleasant surprise for all concerned."

The sky to the east showed a hint of color; sunrise would be spectacular—which did not presage a very pleasant ride today. A colorful sunrise, at least in Karse, meant that there would be storms during the day. There was no reason to think that the weather had changed just because he was across a border.

"We knew of the Empire, of course, but probably no more than you," Ulrich said after a moment. "Some had even dismissed the power of the Emperor and the size of the armies he controlled as nothing more than myth or exaggeration. But then—there he was, or rather, there his army was, even bigger than all the stories had claimed. Suddenly there was nothing standing between us and an Empire fabled for gobbling up entire countries. We had nothing that could stop them—except, perhaps, our own resourcefulness, our God—and that insignificant, inconvenient little alliance with Valdemar."

"Which probably didn't seem so insignificant or nearly so inconvenient, all things considered, when troop estimates came in," Rubrik replied. And if there was a hint of smugness in his voice, well, Karal could hardly blame him.

"There was another side to all of this that you probably had no hint of," Ulrich said, after another moment of thought. "And that is what the appearance of the Empire did for Her Holiness' credibility."

Ulrich nodded at his secretary, and Karal couldn't resist the invitation to have a word of his own in the discussion. "She'd been saying all along that Vkandis was warning her of an even greater peril to come," he offered proudly. "There weren't too many people who believed her, Son of the Sun or not, except Ulrich and a few other Priests."

He stopped then, afraid he might have overstepped himself, but the look Ulrich gave him was approving rather than the opposite. "Precisely. Now she showed that she was a true prophet, for no one could have predicted that the Empire would take an interest in Hardorn—and everything beyond it, one presumes. There is not a soul in Karse who doubts her now."

Well, that wasn't quite true, but it was near enough.

"Now our people as a whole are somewhat—bewildered," Ulrich concluded. "They are having some difficulty with the various changes she has decreed, but it is obvious even to the worst of her detractors that she knows, in the broadest sense of the word, what must be done to save us. It is very clear that if her instructions—or rather, the instructions of Vkandis, as passed to her—are not followed, Karse will not survive the attentions of the Empire. For the people, it is a difficult time. For those of us who believed in Solaris and in our land and God, it is a time of vindication."

"Interesting," Rubrik replied, softly. "I hope you won't mind if I think all this over for a while."

"Be my guest," Ulrich told him, with a hint of a smile. "I believe you might be having just as much difficulty with some of this as some Karsites I could mention."

Rubrik gave him an oblique look but did not reply. Karal felt immensely cheered. It looked as if his mentor had given the Valdemaran more to chew on than he had reckoned possible. Karal had the feeling that the Valdemaran, for the first time, actually believed that Solaris truly was the Son of the Sun, and not just another power-hungry Priest. The Valdemarans would have been perfectly willing to deal with another False Son—provided he (or she) set policies that benefited Valdemar. Karal was not so naive as to think otherwise. But a ruler with the true power of the One God behind her—now that was another proposition altogether.

Seeing Vkandis as something other than an empty vessel or a puppet for the Priests to manipulate was something Karal guessed Rubrik had not been prepared to deal with.

One point scored for us, he thought with satisfaction, and settled into the ride.

Rubrik inevitably came back with more questions, of course, but they were not about the political situation in Karse, but rather, about Ulrich himself. Gradually Karal came to see the pattern to those questions. Rubrik was trying to discover what the envoy himself was made of, the kind of man that the Valdemaran government would be dealing with—and just how much trust Solaris placed in the hands of that envoy.

It was sometimes hard to tell what Rubrik was thinking, but Karal judged that on the whole he was satisfied—and rather surprised to be satisfied. Whatever he had been expecting, it had not been a pair like Karal and his master.

Karal found it amusing to speculate on what he might have been expecting. An oily, professional politician like the last False Son had been, interested only in power and prestige? An ascetic, like Ophela, with no personal interests whatsoever, blind and deaf to anything other than God and Karse?

Throughout the morning, storm clouds had threatened to unleash another torrent; by the time they stopped at an inn for a meal at noon, it was obvious that they were going to ride right down the throat of another storm like the one yesterday.

This time their escort had found them a decent inn, which had its own share of travelers, and none of them paid any attention to a pair of black-clad clergy and their white-liveried escort. Most seemed too concerned with eating and getting on their way again to waste any time in idle curiosity about other travelers. While Karal and his master lingered over a final cup of ale, Rubrik went out to the courtyard, brooded over the state of the weather, then stared at his horse's head for a long time.

Finally he signaled to the stableboy to come and take his horse, Honeybee, and Trenor to the shelter of the stables, then limped back to the inn. "There's no use going any farther today," he said, clearly annoyed, but not with them. "This storm reaches from here past the inn where I intended us to stop. I wish that Elspeth had a few more Herald-Mages to go around. It seems that this so-called 'wizard-weather' is getting worse, not better."

Now how did he know all that? Karal wondered. He hadn't spoken to anyone. Then again, he was very familiar with this area, as he had already demonstrated more than once. Maybe he could tell what the weather was doing by looking for clues too subtle for Karal to catch.

"I can't speak for your situation here," Ulrich replied carefully, "but I can tell you that in magic, sometimes things do have to get worse before they get better."

"Not the sort of thing that your escort cares to hear, my friend," Rubrik replied with a weary laugh as he turned to look at the lowering clouds. He shook his head for, if anything, they were darker and thicker than before. Even Karal could tell they were in for a blow. "I was hoping to make up some time—"

"Not today, friend," Ulrich said with regret. "If we do not stop here, we would have to stop soon. I'm afraid that my old bones are not dealing well with this weather of yours."

Inwardly Karal cheered. At least Ulrich was going to keep his promise!

Rubrik looked around for the innkeeper. "Well, I might as well bespeak some chambers. At least we are well ahead of anyone else."

So it seemed, for he returned to them in a much more cheerful frame of mind, just as the stableboy brought up their packs from the stable. "I think you'll enjoy this stay. This may make up for the fool who sold our rooms out from under us," he said—then told the boy, "Bard Cottage."

The horseboy led them around to a door at the rear of the inn, which seemed a little odd to Karal. Such doors were normally used only at night, by servants, and he could not begin to imagine why the boy had taken them this way.

Then the boy led them outside, and there, connected to the inn by a covered walkway, was a neat little building standing all by itself. It was probably supposed to look like a farmer's cottage, but no farmer had ever built anything like this. Toy-like, cheerfully painted, and far too perfect; if Karal was any judge, it had probably cost more than any three real cottages put together. It's more like the way a highborn would think a farmer's cottage looks, Karal decided, regarding the gingerbread carvings, the window boxes full of flowers, and the freshly-painted, spotless exterior with a jaundiced eye.

"This place is usually taken," Rubrik said with satisfaction. "It's very popular with those with the silver for absolute privacy. There's a small bedroom for each of us, beds fit for a prince, cozy little parlor, private bathing room, and they'll bring dinner over from the inn. If we're going to have to wait out a storm, this is the way to do it."

The rooms were tiny, but the beds were as soft as promised; Karal had the absurd feeling that he was sequestered in a doll house, but the place was comfortable, no doubt about that. The cottage would be hideously confining for a long stay, especially for three adults who did not know each other very well.

By the time they'd each taken a turn at soaking in the huge bathtub, however, Karal was quite prepared to agree with Rubrik's earlier statement. For waiting out a storm, this was the best of all possible venues. He was the last to take his bath, and when he got out, the smell of fresh muffins and hot tea greeted his nose.

He followed his nose to the parlor, where a servant from the inn had just set a tray on the table. Ulrich looked up at his entrance and chuckled at his expression. "Evidently our innkeeper has several young men of your age," the Priest told him. "His cook sent this over before I could even ask Rubrik to find a servant to get you a snack."

Rubrik turned around in his chair and grinned at Karal's expression. "Your master reminded me that young men your age are always hungry, and I pointed out this simple fact to our host. He is good at taking hints."

Karal entered the parlor and took the third chair in front of the newly-lit fire just as the storm broke outside. A crash of thunder shook the cottage, and rain lashed the roof in a sudden torrent, making Karal very glad that they were all inside, and not out on the road.

The windows in this pseudo-cottage were small, and not very satisfactory for storm watching, so Karal contented himself with listening to the thunder and the rain pouring down on the roof, as he helped himself to muffins and tea. He'd always enjoyed watching flames dance in a fireplace, anyway. It would be nice to spend a couple of nights here, if it came to that. Ulrich could use the rest, and he had some papers Ulrich had suggested he study that he hadn't had the time for.

But Rubrik is never going to wait that long, he decided, listening to the conversation with one ear. He wants us in Haven as soon as possible. I wonder what could be so urgent?

Ulrich had turned the tables on their escort, and was asking personal questions of him. Rubrik didn't seem at all reluctant to answer them now, although he had not been so forthcoming before this. Perhaps he had decided that not only was Ulrich worthy of trust as an envoy, he was to be trusted with other things as well.

Ulrich had just asked him—with the Priest's customary tact and delicacy—how he had come to be injured. Karal stopped listening to the rain outside, and devoted his full attention to the conversation.

"That is—an interesting question," the envoy replied measuringly.

"I hope you'll forgive such impertinence," Ulrich told him, with sincerity that was obvious, "but I couldn't help but think, since from the scar it is a recent injury, that it occurred in the war with Ancar. I thought perhaps it might have a bearing on why you are our escort, and not—someone else. And I wondered if something in that tale might account for your astonishingly good command of our tongue."

"It's not all that impertinent. I find stares a great deal ruder. And oddly enough, it does have something to do with why I am here—and why I know Karsite so well," the Valdemaran said, after a pause to examine Ulrich searchingly, as if he was trying to ferret out some hidden motive in asking such a question. "It happened while I was trying to protect one of your fellow Priests of Vkandis."

Ulrich nodded gravely. "You did seem to know a bit too much about us." He raised his mug of tea and sipped. "More than could be accounted for by your presumed acquaintance with a certain Master of Weaponry that we both know is in your Queen's employ."

"Correct." Rubrik smiled crookedly. "Your fellow Priest was not particularly happy to have me guarding him, at the time. Not that I can blame him, since at the time I was not particularly happy to be there. We had something of a cautious truce, but neither of us really trusted the other."

Why does that not surprise me? Karal thought, with heavy irony.

Rubrik closed his eyes briefly and set his cup down. "We went through several encounters without much trouble, but then our lot got hit hard, by a company of Ancar's troops that not only included a mage, but several mages. Good ones, at that. He agreed to hold the rear in a retreat—damned brave of him, I thought—counting on me to keep him from getting hurt while he set up the magic that would take care of that. He got wrapped up in working some complex bit of magery, and couldn't move—"

"Tranced," Ulrich replied succinctly. "Many of the young Priests cannot work magic without being entranced."

Rubrik coughed, picked up his cup again, and sipped his own tea. "Yes, well, the line moved back, and we didn't move with it, and no one noticed for a long, critical moment. And since I'd been assigned to guard him, well, I did."

"And?"

He coughed again. "There were several of them, and only two of us, Laylan and me. I'm not a bad fighter, but I'm no Kerowyn. One of the biggest got through my guard, and I went down, right about the time his magic finally started working. That was when someone behind us noticed we weren't with the group anymore, and came back to get us."

Ulrich tilted his head to one side. "A glancing blow? But obviously one that did a great deal of damage."

Rubrik shivered, in spite of the warmth of the fire. "It was closer than I ever want to come again. I will say the Priest stood by me until the others got to us, right along with Laylan. And he was touchingly grateful, and dragged another one of your Priests over to Heal me as soon as we were hauled back to safety, since there wasn't one of our Healers around that could handle a wound like this one. I'm told that's why the only lasting effect of what could have killed me is this bit of stiffness and an uncooperative leg. Your Healer-Priest was a damned fine human being, treated me as if I was Karsite—and your other lad not only thanked me when I woke up, but acted like he believed in the alliance from then on. That's when my view of your lot changed to something a bit more charitable."

Ulrich refilled his mug from the teapot and nodded. "As his did of you Valdemarans, I expect."

Rubrik chuckled. "I won't say we became the greatest of friends, but we got along just fine after that. He did express a great deal of surprise that a White Demon would take a life-threatening injury to save him, and that the Hellhorse would then proceed to guard both of us."

Karal paled a bit. White Demon? Hellhorse? Rubrik?

Ulrich grinned broadly. "I daresay. Perhaps some good came out of the bad, then—"

"I just wish it hadn't happened to me." Rubrik sighed. "Ah well, the life of a Herald is not supposed to be an easy one. I could count myself lucky that the ax went a bit to the left. To end the story, that's why I'm your escort, and not someone like—oh, Lady Elspeth. I was impressed enough with the way that stiffnecked youngster turned around, and with the Healer-Priest that helped me, that I specifically requested assignment to any missions dealing with Sun-Priests. I wanted whoever met you two to be someone who would at least treat you like human beings."

Herald! White Demon! Hellhorse! Oh, glorious God—

Rubrik was a Herald. A White Demon. And that beautiful horse that Karal had admired so much was no horse at all.

He stared into the fire, stunned, quite unable to move. It was a good thing he wasn't holding anything, or he'd have dropped it, his hands were so numb. He didn't even realize that Rubrik had excused himself and gone back to the inn for something, until the door closed behind him.

"Child, you look as if someone smacked you with a board," Ulrich observed dispassionately. "Are you all right?"

Karal rose to his feet, somewhat unsteadily, and stared at his mentor, trembling from head to foot in mingled shock and fear. "Didn't you hear what he said?" Karal spluttered. "He's one of them! Demonspawn! The—"

"I know, I know," Ulrich replied, with a yawn. "I've known all along. If that 'here I am, shoot me now,' white livery of theirs wasn't a dead giveaway, the Companion certainly is."

"But you didn't say anything!" Karal wailed, feeling as if he'd been betrayed.

"I thought you knew," Ulrich told him, a hint of stern rebuke in his voice. "We are in Valdemar. We are envoys from Her Holiness. The Heralds are the most important representatives of their Queen, and the only ones she trusts fully to accomplish delicate tasks. We've always called them White Demons. It should have been logical."

Karal just stared at him.

"Then again," Ulrich said, after a moment of thought, "I apologize. I should have told you, you're correct. I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised that you didn't recognize our friend for what he is—you've only had those ridiculous descriptions in the Chronicles to go on. I should have said something."

"But—" Karal began, wildly. "He—"

"—is the same man he was a few moments ago, before you realized what his position in Valdemar was," Ulrich pointed out, sipping his tea. "He is still the same. You are still the same. The only thing that has changed is how you see him, which is not accurate."

Karal tried to get a breath and couldn't. "But—"

"Does he eat babies for breakfast?" Ulrich asked, with a hint of a grim smile.

Karal was forced to shake his head. "No, but—"

"Do he or his mount shoot fire from their nostrils, or leave smoking, blackened footprints behind them?" Ulrich was definitely enjoying this.

Karal wasn't. "No, but—"

"Has he been anything other than kind and courteous to either of us?" Ulrich continued inexorably.

"No," Karal replied weakly. "But—" He sat back down in his chair with a thud. "I don't understand—"

Ulrich picked up Karal's tea mug and leaned over to put it back in his hands. "Child," he said softly, "he has heard the same stories of us that we have heard of the Heralds. The trouble is—I fear that the stories about us were partly true. We did have the Fires of Cleansing. We did summon demons to do terrible things, often to people who were innocent of wrongdoing. And yet he has the greatness of heart to assume that you and I, personally, never did any such things. What does that say to you?"

"That—he's the same man whose company I enjoyed this morning," Karal finally said, with a little difficulty. His mind felt thick. His thoughts moved as though they were weighted. And yet he could not deny the truth of what Ulrich had just said.

"I suggest that you relax and continue to enjoy his company," Ulrich replied, leaning back in his chair. "I certainly am, and I intend to go on doing so. In fact, after hearing his story, I am inclined to trust him to live up to every good thing that Her Holiness told me about Heralds."

But— Karal's thought froze right there, and he clasped his mug and stared down into the steaming tea as if he would somehow find his answers there. Ulrich was right; nothing had changed except for the single word.

Herald. Not such a terrible word. Just a word, after all. A name—and Karal had, in his own time, been called plenty of names.

That never made me into anything that they called me.

Yes, well, the word "Herald" in and of itself was nothing terrible either. What word really was?

Ulrich was right about the rest of it, too. He had never seen a Hellsp—

A Herald.

Right. He had never seen a Herald in all his life. The descriptions in the Chronicles were infantile, really—composed of all the horrors mothers used to frighten little children into obedience, rolled into one and put into a white shroud. Not a neat uniform, a livery like Rubrik's, but a tattered, ichor-dripping shroud of death. And no matter what other things he'd learned that had been wrong about their former enemies, somehow he had still expected Heralds to be monsters.

If you want to make your enemy into something you can hate, you first remove his humanity.... Had Ulrich said that at one point, or had that been something he'd heard during one of Solaris' speeches? It was true, whoever had said it, and the Chronicles had certainly tried to remove all vestige of humanity from these Heralds. Make them only icons. When they are seen as a type, and not as individuals, they are easy for a fanatical mind to grasp—and hate.

Karal didn't think he was fanatically-minded, but then again, what fanatic ever did? It was going to take a while to get used to this.

"I think I'm going to go—ah—meditate for a while," he said to Ulrich, who was staring into the fire with every evidence of utter contentment. The Priest waved a lazy hand at him.

"Go right ahead," his master said. "I believe you ought to. You've just had a shock, and you need to think about it. I'm sure your nose will tell you when dinner arrives, if your stomach doesn't demand it first."

Karal put down his mug and retired to his room, flushing in confusion, and wondered how things in his life had managed to become more complicated than he had ever dreamed possible.

And how was he ever going to make all the scattered pieces of it fit again?

He still hadn't quite wrapped his mind around the concept of "Rubrik-as-Hellspawn, Hellspawn-as-Herald" by the time dinner arrived. He ate quickly and quietly, listening, but not participating in the conversation at all. Ulrich and their escort continued their chat as blithely as if nothing whatsoever had changed, although Rubrik did ask, with some concern, if Karal was feeling all right.

"You look pale," he observed, as Karal bolted the last of his dinner. "If you're getting sick, please tell me—this is a good-sized town, and there are real Healers here. Healer-Priests, too, and there may even be one of the splinter Sunlord Temples here—"

"Ah, I meant to ask you about that," Ulrich interjected. "Later, that is."

"It's nothing, sir, my master already knows about it," Karal said hoarsely, taking the proffered excuse for what might be considered rude behavior. "It's just a headache. I—I think I'll go to my room, and sleep it off."

Karal fled before Rubrik could ask anything else. His dinner lay in his stomach like a ball of cold, damp clay. It had probably been excellent; he'd bolted it so fast he hadn't really noticed.

He spent part of the night staring sleeplessly at the ceiling, the murmurs of conversation in the next room scarcely audible over the pounding rain. He wasn't able to make out what the other two were saying, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. He just couldn't handle this. How could he act normally around Rubrik ever again?

But the soft, comfortable bed and the rhythmic pounding of the rain overhead seduced him into a dreamless sleep, and in the morning his anxiety seemed pretty stupid. He lay there in his bed, sheepishly wondering why the "revelation" had seemed so terrible last night. Ulrich was right; Rubrik was still the same man—and Heralds, as Karsite myth painted them, couldn't possibly have been anything like the reality. After all, there were plenty of things that had "always been True" or had been "the Will of Vkandis" that Solaris had proven were lies. So why should anything the False Ones taught about the Heralds be true?

He rose and went into the parlor, to find Ulrich already there and in high good humor, which meant his joints no longer pained him. The doors and windows were standing open wide to a wonderful warm breeze, there was a meal waiting on the table for him, and Rubrik was nowhere in sight. This storm had swept through cleanly last night, leaving behind a morning like a new-minted coin, the air washed so clean and pure that it was a pleasure to breathe. Rubrik had not sent servants to wake them up, and had let them sleep until after the sun rose. After a truly excellent breakfast, they joined their escort in the courtyard of the inn beneath an absolutely cloudless blue sky.

"Headache better?" Rubrik asked, as the horse-boy led Trenor up to Karal and held him so that Karal could mount easily.

"Yes, sir, thank you," Karal was able to reply, with a smile.

"Good. I get a touch of one myself in these wizard-storms. They say most people with any hint of mind-magic do." He gazed searchingly at Karal, who had no idea of what he was talking about. Karal shrugged his incomprehension.

"Yes, but how does that explain my poor, aching joints?" Ulrich put in, with a faint smile. "I certainly do not hear thoughts with my knees!"

Rubrik laughed heartily. "A good question, and one that probably proves that, as always, the nebulous 'they' are probably as foolish as the things 'they' are reputed to say!"

On that cheerful note, he led them out to the road, heading north again, under a brilliant sun.

That seemed a good enough omen to start, and as the morning wore on, Karal managed to dismiss the rest of his lingering fears as absolutely groundless. The Herald and Ulrich must have shared a great deal of personal information after Karal went to bed, for now they acted like a pair of real friends.

Huh, he thought, with astonishment, for Ulrich had never been friends with anyone that Karal had ever noticed. But there it was, as they rode side by side, there was an easiness between them that could not be anything but friendship. Ulrich respected him as soon as we met—and after that, there was a kind of—fellowship, maybe? Something like that, anyway; like he'd have with, oh, one of the Army Captains. Someone who deserved respect and was an interesting and intelligent person, a man he had things in common with. But this is different. I'm not sure how, but it's different. Ulrich seems happier, more open, and the tone of his voice is warmer than it usually is around other people.

He found that Rubrik was taking pains to see that Karal was included in conversation as the day wore on. And somewhat to his astonishment, he realized that he had begun to actually relax around the Herald. If anything, Rubrik reminded him of his favorite uncle, the one who'd been a guard with a merchant caravan and had a wealth of tales about strange places and the wonderful things he had seen.

Rubrik was evidently in the mood to tell some of his own tales this morning, for he began to describe some of the other "foreigners" that they would meet once they reached the capital of Haven and the Court of Queen Selenay. Some of them, Karal would not have believed under any other circumstances, but Rubrik had absolutely no reason to lie and every reason to tell them the whole and complete truth.

But if he was telling the whole and complete truth—some of the other envoys weren't human at all....

Ulrich didn't act at all surprised, though, as the Herald described some of the strangest creatures Karal had ever heard of. The Hawkbrothers were bad enough, with their white hair, intelligent birds, and outlandish clothing. But then he described the gryphons—Treyvan, Hydona, and their two youngsters. It was the little ones that made Karal decide that the Herald was not trying to play some kind of elaborate trick on them. Why make up that kind of detail if it was only a jest? The adult gryphons would have been more than enough.

"I'd been warned," Ulrich said laconically, when Rubrik ended his description. "After all, several of our Priests actually worked with these gryphons. Including one young lady who learned a valuable lesson in—hmm—"

"Cooperation?" Rubrik suggested with a wry smile.

"I was thinking, humility, but that will do." Ulrich's eyes actually twinkled. "Karal, you'll remember her, you were schooled with her. Gisell."

Karal's mouth dropped open with astonishment. "Gisell? Humility?" The two simply did not go together! Gisell had been one of the most stiffnecked little highborn bitches he'd ever had the misfortune to meet. Nothing could induce her to forget her lofty pedigree or her many important relatives.

Rubrik laughed heartily, and his smile reached and warmed his eyes. "Oh, a gryphon can bite you in two and have your legs shredded while your top half watches. When he tells you that you will work with the son of a pigkeeper and like it, you learn to be humble very quickly."

"If Gisell can learn to be humble, then I can believe in gryphons," Karal said firmly, provoking another burst of laughter, both from the Herald and from his master.

"Gryphons are just as real as my Companion Laylan, I promise you," Rubrik assured him. "And no more a monster than he is."

Now that triggered another thought, one that had sat in the back of his mind, pushed aside by the pressing dilemma of Rubrik-as-Herald. His horse—or rather, his Companion. Karsite legend had plenty to say about the creatures that Heralds rode, too! And now his behavior, which had seemed to be "only" remarkable training, had an explanation.

Laylan wasn't a horse. Obviously. "No more a monster than he is" he said—but he isn't, can't be, even a magical horse like the Hawkbrothers' birds. Even if back home they'd call him a Hellhorse. So what is he if he isn't a horse?

He held the question back, but it irritated him like an insect bite he couldn't scratch. Laylan himself seemed to know that it was tormenting him, too, because he kept looking back at him, and now he saw what his assumption that he was an animal had not let him see before. He watched him, watched Ulrich, and he had the sense that he was somehow participating in the conversation, even if he couldn't say anything in words.

Finally he couldn't stand it anymore. "Sir? Your—Laylan—what is he?"

Rubrik blinked, taken quite by surprise by the breathless question. "I suppose you wouldn't know, would you," he said, finally, turning in his saddle and squinting against the bright sunlight. "Ah—the best explanation we have is that Companions are a benign spirit in a mortal body. In some ways, rather like gryphons, except that they deliberately ally themselves with Heralds in order to help us help our land. They choose to look like horses, we believe, because horses pass without notice practically everywhere."

"Ah!" Ulrich's exclamation of delighted understanding made both of them turn toward the Priest. "That is the best explanation I have heard yet; I never had heard any reason why your Companions should have that particular form. It seems an inconvenient one."

Rubrik snorted, and so did Laylan. "Say that some time when you see him in full charge! This is several stone of muscle and very sharp hooves, my friend, and he knows how to use both to advantage! I'd rather have him in a fight than twenty armsmen, and that's a fact." He tilted his head to one side and added, as if it had never occurred to him before, "Odd though, that you Karsites don't seem to have anything like Companions, with your Vkandis being so—"

He flushed, and cut the sentence off, but Ulrich chuckled. "So much of a divine busybody in our lives, is that what you were going to say?" Rubrik winced, but the Priest only grinned. "Oh, don't apologize, even Her Holiness has been known to comment on that from time to time. Actually, though, Vkandis does have two supernatural manifestations that ordinary Priests—which are the closest thing we have to your Heralds—can experience. The sad part is that one of those was and is tragically easy to feign."

Ulrich gave Karal a prompting look.

"The Voice of Flame?" Karal asked with interest, taking the look to mean that Ulrich meant him to supply the correct answer.

Ulrich nodded. "Good, you recall what I told you." He turned back to the Herald. "The Voice of Flame is a sourceless nimbus of fire_; it appears above the head of a Priest and speaks through him. It is, by far, the most common manifestation of Vkandis' Will. Since we Priests are often mages as well as clergy, I'm sure you can see how easy this particular manifestation of the Will was to counterfeit."

Rubrik made a sour face. "Not a chance you could counterfeit a Companion—" he began.

"Ah, but this is what is interesting," Ulrich interrupted eagerly. "There was, traditionally, another manifestation that was impossible to counterfeit—and it was one that had not been seen in so long that it had fallen almost into myth. Until recently, that is. And it seems to me that the Firecats are very like your Companions."

"Firecats?" Rubrik shook his head. "I've never heard of them."

"Not likely anyone has, outside of Karse," Karal put in. "In fact, until one showed up with Solaris, I'd say most of the Priests didn't believe in them anymore, either!"

"A cat?" Rubrik's skepticism was quite clear. "How could an ordinary cat—"

"No more an ordinary cat than your Laylan is an ordinary horse, my friend," Ulrich told him gleefully. "First of all, there is the color—Firecats are unique. They are a pale cream in color, with red ears, facial mask, paws, and tail. And like your Companions, they have blue eyes. Then there is the size—they are as tall as mastiffs. And they talk."

"Talk?" Rubrik was incredulous for just a split second. "Wait—you mean, in Mindspeech?"

"Mind-to-mind, yes," Ulrich agreed. "They can, and do, speak to whomever they choose, however, and I believe your Companions speak only to their selected Heralds?"

Rubrik nodded, and Ulrich went on.

"Firecats historically appeared at significant times to offer advice, not only to the Son of the Sun, but often to anyone else who was of crucial importance. In ancient times, the Son of the Sun was always accompanied by at least one, and often two Cats." Ulrich shrugged. "Now, the Cats stopped appearing, I believe, about the time that the Fires of Cleansing were begun; I also believe that there has not been a genuine manifestation of the Voice since that same period, at least not among the Priests in the capital and the larger cities. Until recently."

Rubrik sat as bolt upright in his saddle as his infirmity would allow. "Are you telling me that—"

"I, myself, have seen Her Holiness speak with what I believe to be the genuine Voice," Ulrich told him. "But far more important, Solaris has a Firecat. He calls himself 'Hansa'—and that is the name of one of the most ancient Sons of the Sun, a name not even a demon would claim with impunity—he is not only seen sitting beside her, but he actually appeared shortly after Vkandis struck down the False Son." He nodded as Rubrik's eyes narrowed in speculation. "His appearance served to further confirm her in the eyes and minds of the populace. But if you have any doubt, I have heard it from her own lips—and from Hansa's mind—that he is the one who advised her to make Herald Talia an honorary Sun-priest to cement our alliance."

Rubrik's mouth formed into a silent "o", but Ulrich wasn't quite finished yet.

"All the Firecats have traditionally referred to themselves by names of former Sons of the Sun. We have always believed that they are the spirits of former Sons who have taken on a material form in order to guide and advise us." He cast a significant glance down at Laylan, who looked up at him blandly and actually batted his eyelashes at him. "Obviously, they are exactly like your Companions, except that there are fewer of them. I assume that is because there are fewer deceased Sons than there are deceased Heralds."

Now it was Rubrik's turn to look as if someone had hit him in the back of the head with a board. And there was a whicker from Laylan that sounded suspiciously like a snicker.

"Of course—" Rubrik replied weakly. "Obviously." As if it wasn't obvious at all, and the thought had never once crossed his mind.

Rubrik's astonishment was so total, and so blatant, that Karal came very near to disgracing himself completely by blurting out the question, "Do you mean that hadn't ever occurred to you?" He stopped himself just in time.

In the first place, such a question would be twenty leagues beyond rude, and Ulrich would be completely within his rights—even his duty—to send him back in disgrace on the spot. One did not ask questions like that if one was a diplomat.

In the second place—

It's possible that the Companions actually have been keeping Heralds from even thinking just that. The Firecats were known to be what they were only to the Priests—the rest of the Karsite populace simply regarded them as signs of Vkandis' favor. Most ordinary folk were not even aware that the Cats spoke to the Priests—after all, the Priests had the Voice, what did they need with a talking feline?

I can think of several reasons why Companions would not want it known that they had once been Heralds, Karal decided, rather grimly, after a moment of silence that gave him plenty of time to really examine the idea. For instance, there had been one infamous attempt to destroy a Firecat by the traitor who had brought about the assassination of the Son of the Sun whose name the Firecat bore.

Not that that worked. Firecats can protect themselves very nicely. The assassin made a lovely bonfire, so the story goes. But surely, there were people who would be very unhappy if certain Heralds were to reappear after their demise—and Companions, unlike the Cats, could be killed.

And even a Karsite knows that if you kill the Hellhorse—the Companion—you'll probably kill the Herald.

There could be emotional conflicts among the Heralds as well. How would a loved one feel, knowing that the beloved ex-Herald could return if he chose, even if in a rather—inconvenient—form? It would be devastating if he did, and nearly as bad if he didn't.

As he was mulling all this over, he caught sight of Laylan staring back at him over his shoulder—and when he caught his eye, he nodded as if he had been following his very thoughts.

As if—like Hansa—she can see what is in my mind—

Once again, he sat frozen in place, stunned. Like Hansa. The Cats are like Companions—

Once again, he nodded; gravely, but unmistakably.

Only one thought floated up out of the shock.

If the Cats are like the Companions, then we are not so different from our ancient enemies after all.

And he could not for the life of him decide if that realization was a reassuring one.

Seven

An'desha stared unhappily out the window of his provisional home. Late afternoon sunset streamed through the branches of the trees around Firesong's ekele, and left patches of gilding on the grass beyond the windows. The silence that must surely be outside was not mirrored within. The indoor garden was full of laughter and talk, even to the point where the burbling of the waterfalls and fountains was overwhelmed by human chatter.

An'desha sat on a rock ledge in the farthest corner of the hot pool, dangling his feet in the water and trying not to sulk. He could not suppress his bitter unhappiness, though, and by the gods, he wasn't sure he wanted to! Firesong had not consulted him on this; he hadn't even been warned that there were visitors coming this afternoon. Firesong had simply showed up with all of them in tow, some of whom An'desha had never even met before. It was rude, it was unfair, and he was not in a mood to make the best of it.

This was supposed to be his retreat away from all the strangeness of Valdemar—so why did Firesong have to bring half of Valdemar into the retreat and spoil it?

Well, maybe not half of Valdemar, but it certainly sounded like it. The garden felt overcrowded, and the fragile peace he had been trying to cultivate was shattered.

An'desha had not had a very good day today; not that everything had gone wrong, but nothing had quite gone light. Firesong kept telling him that he needed to get out and interact with other people, to meet some of these foreigners, so today he had gritted his teeth and made an attempt, hoping for Firesong's approval. Hoping for some success to show him, however small that was.

He'd gone off on his own this afternoon while Firesong taught the young mages. A few days ago he had volunteered to help a group of those youngsters who wore the rust, blue, or gray clothing with one of their lessons in Shin'a'in, and their teacher had gladly accepted his offer. Today was to have been the first of those lessons, and An'desha had some vague idea that he might socialize with them after the lesson. Wasn't that what these strange children did? First have lessons, then socialize?

The lesson had gone on all right, but afterward, when they accepted his hesitant suggestion that they could ask him questions and he would try to answer them, he'd retreated in bewildered confusion within a few stammered sentences. They were just too—weird. They weren't anything like the Shin'a'in of his Clan_; they seemed avidly, greedily curious about everything, at least to him, and they asked things he considered terribly callous and horribly intrusive. Of course it was possible that they had no idea that they were being so intrusive—and it was possible that with their limited grasp of Shin'a'in they simply didn't know what they were asking, but why ask him all those prying questions about Firesong? And what in the name of the Star-Eyed was a "Tayledras mating circle?"

Rudeness was bad enough, but they were also shallow, or at least their questions pointed in that direction. To him they seemed selfish and preoccupied with trivialities. He found himself getting angry at them for being so cavalier and carefree, then was appalled at himself for being angry with them simply for acting like children.

A Shin'a'in child was an adult the day he (or she) could ride out on the horse he had trained from a colt, and survive on his own on the Plains for one week. That could be any age from nine up. These Valdemarans, raised in cities, had no such measuring stick for maturity. They were children—more to the point, for all that they were not all that much younger than his apparent age, they were sheltered, protected children. He gathered that most of them had never personally been touched by the war that had threatened their land, and certainly none of them could ever even imagine, in their worst nightmares, the kinds of things he had gone through. How could he fault them for being what they were?

But they not only had nothing in common with him, they were so very different from him that they might just as well have been gryphons or kyree. For that matter, he had more in common with the perpetually ebullient Rris than he did with any of them! At least he understood why Rris was always asking questions; he was a historian, and he wanted not only the facts, but the feelings and reasoning that brought the facts about. Kyree oral histories took these factors into account; they were important parts of the tale. These children had no such excuses for their greedy curiosity.

So he returned in confusion and some distress to the only shelter he had anymore—only to find that Firesong had led an invasion of Valdemar into the place where he sought tranquillity, an invasion planned without his knowledge or consent.

Oh, granted, there were only half a dozen of the strangers, but it seemed like more, three times more. They poured into his garden and inserted themselves into his heated pool, barely stopping long enough in their ongoing conversation to greet him. And if he sequestered himself upstairs, Firesong would want to know why and probably be disgusted with him for not even trying to be polite and sociable. So he stayed and found himself virtually excluded from the conversation anyway, simply because he had no idea what was going on or what they were talking about.

To his right were Elspeth and Darkwind; well, at least he knew them. Elspeth was the daughter of the ruler of this place, and a Herald—she had a spirit-creature called a "Companion" that looked something like a horse and spoke in the mind. A lithe and lively young woman, her dark hair was now more silver than sable, and her eyes a soft blue-gray, turned that way by her use of the node-energy from the Heartstone beneath her mother's palace. She was that unique creature among humans, strong and beautiful, and perfectly self-confident, if rather headstrong. Darkwind was another Hawkbrother, an Adept, though not the equal of Firesong, with the raptoral features of most Tayledras, and the pure silver hair and blue eyes all Tayledras grew into eventually, simply by living around Heartstones. Both Elspeth and Darkwind knew Firesong long before An'desha had met any of them; he got the impression that Firesong had been their teacher at one point.

Beyond them, up to their necks in hot water, were a tall blonde woman they called "Kero" and a man whose name An'desha hadn't even caught. It had sounded something like "elder" and that surely couldn't be right. Both of them were older than anyone else here, but An'desha wouldn't have challenged either of them to a fight. Their muscles and the way they moved told him that they were a lot more dangerous than they looked. The clothing that the man had shed was of the white kind worn by the Heralds, and though the woman had been wearing dark leather gear, they both seemed to have those same kind of spirit-beasts that Elspeth partnered.

Beyond them was Firesong, holding court, and beyond him, the Shin'a'in envoy and some mage or other this "Kero" knew who looked to have a lot of Shin'a'in blood in him. He was a little younger than Kero was, and although he had the dark hair and golden skin of a man of the Plains, he had emerald green eyes. Besides, he was definitely a mage, and An'desha knew from personal experience that no Shin'a'in could be a mage, unless he was a shaman as well. He seemed comfortable in this strange gathering, anyway. A lot more comfortable than An'desha, who belonged here.

Not a huge group, after all—only six, eight if you counted An'desha and Firesong, but they were all such vivid personalities that An'desha felt smothered, ignored, or both. They were all chattering away like old friends, which they probably were, but they seemed to have forgotten that An'desha didn't know any of them, really.

This invasion of his private preserve, coming at the end of an uncomfortable afternoon, made him want to throw a very childish tantrum. He wanted to be alone with Firesong—no matter how hard it was to reconcile his feelings about the young mage, at least Firesong was one person he could understand. Firesong would make excuses for him and help find answers! An'desha wanted the music of falling water, not insistent chatter. Or, if there must be talk, he wanted to talk to Firesong about his difficulties with these strange, intrusive people of Valdemar. They were nice enough, but nosey.

He would have said that he wanted to go home, except that he had no home, and this was the closest he was likely to get. Now these strangers had just proved that it wasn't his home, and never would be, simply by being here.

He didn't want to share Firesong or his place with the group of laughing, splashing invaders.

They were talking like mad things in three languages, only two of which he understood at all well; his own Shin'a'in and Tayledras. They chattered about more people and doings he knew nothing about.

That was not all that upset him. There was something about this gathering that set his nerves on edge, something intangible that had nothing to do with the invasion of his place. There was a frenetic, feverish quality to the conversation he sensed, but couldn't fathom. They acted as if they were trying to drive something unpleasant away by sheer volume of talk.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, it was becoming increasingly clear to him by the moment that Firesong was flirting with Darkwind. In front of everyone!

Was Firesong trying to humiliate him?

He pulled his feet out of the water in a fit of sullen fury, and snatched up a towel and his clothing. Furious, he began to dry himself off, ignored by the others. Ignored even by Firesong, who was engrossed in his flirtation.

Oh, gods. How could he not have guessed that something like this would happen? Weren't the Hawkbrothers supposed to be as light-in-love as their feathered companions?

But must Firesong take on a new conquest in front of him and everyone else? And why Darkwind?

Well, naturally, they are both Tayledras Adepts, and Darkwind is attractive and clever and mature, and I'm a half-Shin'a'in freak with more problems than twenty sane people. I'm a cowardly fool who doesn't understand most of what Firesong tries to show me.

"...and now that you're properly silver-haired, as an Adept should be, with a decent wardrobe, you're actually a credit to k'Sheyna instead of a disgrace," Firesong teased, while An'desha struggled into his shirt and breeches; a difficult proposition with still-wet skin. "I don't know how Elspeth was ever attracted to you, with your hair dyed the color of mud and full of bark. You looked like a mad hermit, not a proper Hawkbrother."

"Oh?" Darkwind arched his eyebrows and grinned, then splashed Firesong with a handful of water. "Really? And who was it told Elspeth he wanted to braid feathers into my hair? I thought perhaps you liked the rustic look. You might have found me challenging."

"Hmph." Firesong sent the droplets flying back at Darkwind with a flicker of magic. "If I did tell her something like that, it was because I was hoping to induce some sense of proper grooming into you."

Darkwind pouted. "And here all the time I thought you wanted me!"

"We-ell, now that you look like a civilized human being and not a patch of brush—" Firesong fluttered long, silver eyelashes at the lean and muscular k'Sheyna Adept, who smirked and fluttered right back at him.

An'desha stared, aghast, embarrassed, humiliated. Oh, he knew that the Hawkbrothers were free enough with their favors, but—

—but how could they carry on like this? And light in front of him! They were trying to hurt him! He hadn't done anything to deserve treatment like this!

He felt his skin grow cold, then hot; his throat choked, and his stomach knotted. As he struggled to control himself, astonishment turned to something darker, in the blink of an eye.

He flushed again, hotter this time. From "how could they," the thought turned to another.

How dare they!

His hands knotted into fists; his stomach cramped. He clenched his jaw so hard he thought his teeth would shatter. He choked back an exclamation of pain and outrage.

Firesong continued to flirt, without a single glance at him.

His heart pounded until he shook with the rhythm and blood roared in his ears. His jaw ached as he clenched it tight.

Firesong leaned closer to Darkwind and murmured something that made the other Adept laugh aloud, throwing his head back and showing a fine set of white teeth. Firesong laid one elegant hand on Darkwind's shoulder.

Rage flared, fed by jealousy, into an all-consuming conflagration which left room for only one thought.

I'll—I'll eviscerate him! Though which "him," he couldn't at that moment say. He struggled with his numb, impotent anger, fought with the feelings that threatened to bind him where he stood.

Something dark uncoiled like a newly-awakened snake, deep inside him. It oozed through his veins and tingled along his nerves.

For a brief moment, his rage lacked a target, torn as it was between Firesong and Darkwind equally. But then, as Darkwind made to snatch at a feather from his bondbird's tail to give to Firesong, it all turned against the interloper.

How dare he!

And suddenly, as soon as he had the target, his anger was no longer impotent.

The darkness filled him, burned his fingers, longing to be unleashed. He felt power rising in him, rushing to his summons eagerly, flowing into him, all too familiar from the anger-fueled mage-attacks of Mornelithe Falconsbane—power that was poised to tear the guts right out of Darkwind's treacherous body and fling them back in the bastard's face—

—tear the guts from—

—tear—

Realization froze him in place, just before he let the power loose to turn the interloper inside out.

What am I doing?

He stopped himself, appalled, before the power got away from him_; hauled it back and quashed it; dispersed it, let it drain out of him in a rush that left him trembling, this time not with anger, but with horror.

I nearly killed him—

—nearly—

—oh, gods—

Rage turned inward and ate itself, and with a strangled sob of terror, he whirled and fled the garden.

He dashed up the stairs to the second story, blinded with panic, with fear, and with tears of shame. There was only one thought in his mind.

I could have killed him. I could have. I almost did.

Panic gave his stumbling feet the strength his body lacked. He had to get away, away from everyone else, before something worse happened. What was he? What had he become?

Worse yet—what was he still?

A monster. I'm a monster. I'm the Beast....

Falconsbane was alive and well, and living inside him. Waiting for a chance to get out, or better still, looking for a way to make An'desha into the kind of sadistic, perverted, twisted horror he had been.

He heard the running footsteps of someone following him, and turned at the top of the stairs, intending to send whoever it was away, far away from him—away from one irrevocably contaminated with the lurking shadow of Mornelithe Falconsbane. He wasn't thinking any more clearly than that; he only knew that no one should be near him.

But he didn't get a chance to say anything, for it was Elspeth who had followed him, hard on his heels. He had been misled by the soft sound of her bare feet into thinking she was farther behind him. She didn't stop when he did; she ran up the last three stairs and caught him up in her arms and in an impulsive embrace as soon as he turned and faced her, ignoring the fact that she was dripping wet and so was the brief tunic she wore. That simple embrace undid him completely.

Oh, gods....

He collapsed against her without a thought and began to weep, hopelessly; she held him against her damp shoulder, and stroked his hair as if he had been a very small child caught up in a nightmare. In a moment, it didn't matter that her tunic was wet; tears of pain and panic burned their way down his face and into the sodden cloth, and his throat ached with the effort of holding his hysterical sobs back. He simply clung to her, a shelter, a sure refuge, and she supported him.

"An'desha, it's all right," she said quietly, over his strangled sobbing. "Dearheart, it wasn't what you thought it was! Darkwind and I are bonded and Firesong knows it, and Darkwind knows how Firesong feels about you! They were only teasing each other, dear, truly, and they would never, ever have done that if they had any idea how hurt you were just now. We just all thought you were tired and wanted to be left alone, and Firesong's had mischief in him all day."

"But you—" he got out, through the tears. "You—"

How she knew he was trying to ask why she had followed him, he had no idea—but she knew, or guessed right, and gave him the answer.

"I was the only one close enough to see your face, ke'chara. It was only play, and now they're teasing Kero. You were so quiet that we all assumed you'd join in after you revived a little. No one else knows you ran off. You mustn't let things like this bother you so much!" She held him very tightly for a moment, and he felt the warmth of her concern flowing over him. He wanted it to help; he wanted to feel comforted.

It did nothing to thaw the frozen center of his fear.

Worse, she only thought he'd fled, like some stupid jilted lover, like an idiot in a ballad. She hadn't a clue why he was falling apart like this.

He had to tell her. She had to know. It might be her life he threatened next. Would be, if Falconsbane got loose.

"That's not—" He fought the tears back as they threatened to choke him into incoherence. "Elspeth, it wasn't that—didn't you feel it? I was angry, and power just—took over and I almost struck Darkwind! I almost killed him!" He pulled away from her, afraid that he would somehow contaminate her as well. "It's Falconsbane!" he choked out. "He's still—here, he must be, he's still controlling me and I—I—"

He began to shake, trembling with absolute terror. How could he have done that? How could it not have been the Beast within?

Yet she did not draw away from him as he was certain she must, and when she pulled him back against her shoulder he did not resist.

"Is there somewhere up here we can go to sit for a while?" she asked quietly, as the tears began again. He waved vaguely to the right, and she supported him as she steered him away from the staircase and into the sitting room with its view from among the tree branches. She helped him down onto a cushion and sat beside him, still holding him, until his shaking stopped.

"Let's start over," she said quietly as the sun set somewhere beyond the trees, and thick, blue dusk gathered about them. "You were obviously tired, out-of-sorts, and we thoughtlessly came trampling in to destroy what little peace and quiet you had. That put you further out-of-sorts, right?"

He nodded, his stomach churning, only half of his mind on what she was saying. How could any of this matter now?

"Then, already unhappy and angry with us, you thought that Firesong was trying to seduce Darkwind. What you really saw was just Firesong teasing someone who is a good enough friend to tease back." He heard a definite tone of wry amusement in her voice. "I was told by a—a Shin'a'in friend that Hawkbrother teasing usually involves a lot of innuendo and flirtation. She told me that I might as well get used to it, since it's as stupid to get upset over something they grow up with as it would be to become upset because birds fly. So—I got used to it, and I've been known to give as good as I get."

"S-s-so I've got no choice but to get used to it, too?" he said, with a touch of anger getting past the tears, momentarily distracted from his deeper and weightier fears.

He felt her shrug. "If you don't, you're only setting yourself up for more pain," she replied logically. "An'desha, I don't know if you've ever felt strongly about anyone before, but there is one thing you had better get into your head right now. You don't go into a pairing intending to try and change someone to suit you. They were themselves long before you came along. You do go into a pairing ready to compromise."

He shook his head numbly, his entire soul rebelling at the idea that she thought his troubles were no more serious than simple hurt feelings, and once again she divined what he meant though he could not say it.

"Huh... it's not that?"

He nodded, then shook his head helplessly.

"It's not that, and it's more than that?"

He sniffed, and nodded.

She paused for a moment, and thought, her brows creased. "All right. I'll start with what's simplest. Now, listen to me and believe me. Darkwind and I are lovers, partners, and friends—there isn't much that is going to come between us, and Firesong knows that. He also knows that I am not Tayledras, and that I would be very, very hurt if what you saw and heard was anything other than friendly teasing. So does Darkwind. That's one of the compromises we've made." Then she laughed dryly. "More than that, he knows that there is a very real possibility that he would be very, very hurt as well—physically! I have quite a few faults, An'desha, and I have a very bad temper. I do not care to share Darkwind with anyone, and I will not be humiliated, especially in front of others. If I thought that was going to happen, well, someone would need a bandage or splint."

"Oh," was all he could say.

"So—for the answer to the situation that made you angry in the first place and triggered all this, if I don't have a reason to feel jealous or humiliated, and I'm the most jealous wench in Valdemar, certainly you don't!"

Uncertainly, he rubbed at his burning eyes with the back of his hand and coughed. A certain Shin'a'in proverb sprang immediately to mind. Not a flattering one, either. "But they say that the—"

"The lady is always the last to know." She snorted, a most unladylike sound. "Yes, but 'they' don't reckon on bondbirds and Companions, both of whom would tell tales, I promise you. Vree doesn't much care for Firesong's bird Aya, and he likes me and Gwena both; he'd babble like a scarlet jay either to me or to her if Darkwind got up to something with Firesong that I didn't know about."

An'desha wiped his eyes again. It certainly sounded logical. "But—"

"But that's giving Firesong no credit whatsoever for any kind of feelings, honor, or decency; that's assuming that he is as shallow and light-minded as he would like us to think. That is not fair to him, and you know better. For that matter, so do I." She took his chin in two fingers, and angled his face towards hers so that he had to look into her eyes. "Ke'chara, he is a Healing Adept. Don't you realize what that means? Of all people, you should. For all that he seems light-minded on the outside, he cares, more than anyone I have ever seen. He cares for you, and I think he has surprised himself by how much he cares for you. He has put a great deal of himself into the Healing of you, and he will literally empty himself for you if you let him, right down to the dregs. He is as decent and honorable as any Herald I know, and that is the greatest compliment I could give anyone."

An'desha swallowed slowly past the great lump in his throat. "I—"

"He has his faults, plenty of them, but failing to care about you and what happens to you is not one of them. He and I are rather alike when it comes to matters of the heart. Maybe it's the blood we share, I don't know." She looked very stern, and he was forcefully reminded of Need. "Give the man some credit. He has the capacity for great love, and he's not going to risk great love for something trivial. It was nothing more than a game. He would never, ever jeopardize anything having to do with you."

He had to believe her. She knew; she knew people, and she knew Firesong and Darkwind. He blinked, his eyes feeling gritty and sore, and nodded. Then his fear rose in him again, worse than before, when he realized what he could have done for no cause. Somehow that made it all worse.

"But Fal—" he began, with a wail of despair.

She cut him off with a look and a finger placed against his lips. "Falconsbane had nothing to do with the way you reacted. Being far too ready to think yourself hurt did, but not Falconsbane. He is gone, and good riddance."

"No," he replied, with heat. "This time you don't understand! Even if he's gone, he's still a part of me, he's corrupted me, he's gotten into the way I think and react and—"

"Hell, no," she said firmly. "Horseturds. For one thing, I doubt that Mornelithe Falconsbane ever cared enough about anything or anyone to ever feel jealousy! In order to become jealous, you have to care for and value something besides yourself, you know."

That took him aback; it was something that had never even entered his mind. He had to nod cautiously. Falconsbane had certainly never cared for anyone—only valued them as prizes.

She smiled grimly. "As for your own reaction and how strong and irrational it was—perfectly ordinary people have moments of jealousy as terrible as anything you just experienced. It happens all the time." Her smile turned into a grimace of pain. "Unfortunately, Heralds see the aftermath of that kind of jealousy all the time, too."

"I'm not ordinary," he began.

"No," she agreed readily. "You aren't. Ordinary people do not have the ability to rend people limb from limb with little more than a thought. But ordinary people do have the ability to rend other people limb from limb, period, if they are angry enough. It just takes a little more effort on their part, and as I said, Heralds see the aftermath of those episodes of jealousy and rage all the time. The gods know that in this city alone there are plenty of beatings and knifings and other kinds of mayhem inflicted every day to prove that perfectly ordinary people can be driven to kill over jealousy. The only difference between them and you is that they will use perfectly ordinary physical means against the object of their rage." She coughed and rubbed her nose. "It's horrible, it's tragic, but there it is."

"But my point—" he tried to interject.

"What makes you different from those stupid, ordinary people," she continued inexorably, "is that you stopped yourself from acting. You controlled yourself. You were horrified by the very idea you could have hurt Darkwind, even though you were already hurt by him."

"But I might not have!" he cried, panicking again.

"But you did," she replied with emphasis. "You did, even when you didn't know it was a game and meant nothing. You did control yourself, when you thought you had every reason to strike back. Now you know what the silly teasing-game looks like between two very good friends, and you won't make that mistake again. You know how much we value you, and that we would never knowingly hurt you, and I hope that you will ask one of us before you jump to any conclusions."

"I—"

He stopped and never completed the sentence, because he frankly did not know what to say. She had an answer for every one of his fears and his arguments. She could even be right. He had no way of knowing.

She waited patiently for him to say something, then shrugged. "Right now I think we ought to do something to salvage this situation. I don't think you want anyone else to know that you came running up here, hurt. If I were you, I wouldn't."

Well, he had to agree completely with that, anyway. He felt enough like a fool; the last thing he wanted was for everyone else in the gathering to know he was a fool.

"In that case, we need to think of some logical reason for both of us to have come up here." She nibbled a fingernail for a moment, deep in thought. "Food, maybe? Or something to drink? Do you two keep those things here?"

"Yes," he replied, nearly speechless with gratitude at her quick thinking. "And surely everyone is thirsty by now."

"Good. Let's go get some drink and bring it down to them, maybe something in the way of a snack as well." She rose to her feet and gave him her hand. He took it and she helped him to his. She was a lot stronger than she looked.

Her brief tunic had dried, and so had her hair_; it curled around her face in a wispy silver-streaked cloud. He wondered how it was that she could be so earthy and so unearthly, all at the same time.

"Lead the way, ke'chara. I'm not a lot of good as cook, but I can carry a tray with the best of them." She winked at him, and he found himself smiling back at her as he led the way to the tiny kitchen where he prepared meals from time to time.

They assembled enough food and drink to have accounted for their absence, and she used a damp, cold cloth to erase any lingering traces of his hysteria. He allowed her to persuade him to rejoin them all by promising that she would make certain he was not left out of things from now on.

But he did not go back down those stairs without an invisible load of misgivings along with his other burdens. She was very likely right when it came to her assertions about Darkwind and Firesong—but when it came to himself, he was not so sure.

And despite Elspeth's kind words, Falconsbane had left traces inside him, in the form of knowledge and memories. Even if he was able to control his emotions forevermore, there were things he could never have faith in again. There were too many things he could not blindly believe in now, after hosting a madman in his body. No, when it came to the future, he could not seem to muster Elspeth's level of hope. There was no blind optimism left in him, no confidence that he'd control his rage next time, and he was very much afraid of that uncertainty. There was more than one way for a madman to be born.

Eight

Horses were never suited to traveling by night, especially moonless nights. Karal was a good rider, and the gelding's tension communicated itself to him through a hundred physical signals he felt in his hands and his legs_; the horse was nervous as well as tired, and all of his nervousness stemmed from the fact that he couldn't see.

Trenor stumbled on the uneven road, and Karal steadied him with hand and voice. The gelding whickered wearily, and Karal wondered if he ought to tell Herald Rubrik he was going to have to dismount and lead the poor horse before he took a tumble and ruined his knees.

"We're almost there. Just over the next rise, Karal, you'll see it in a minute," Rubrik's voice floated back through the moonless dark. He could have been a disembodied spirit or hundreds of paces ahead; there was no way of telling. "Or rather, you'll see the lights. Once your horse can see where he's going, he'll have an easier time of it."

"I'm not foundering Trenor," he replied stubbornly. "I'm not going to ride him to exhaustion, and I'm not going to let him take a fall with me on his back. One more stumble, and I'm walking him in."

A white shape loomed up in front of him, and he realized that Rubrik and Ulrich had pulled up on the road verge to wait for him. "No one is asking you to hurt Trenor, lad," the Herald said in a tired voice. "I'd spare you both if I could, but there's nowhere to stay but hedges between here and Haven, and once we reach Haven we might as well go to the Palace. I'm sorry I had to push you like this, but I had word there's more wizard-weather coining in, and that last bridge was about to go."

He's repeating himself; that's the third time he's told me that. He's pretending to be in a lot better shape than he really is. I'll bet he's in a lot more pain than he's letting on, too.

Since they'd passed that last bridge right at sunset, and Karal had been able to see for himself just how shaky the structure was, he hadn't argued with going on at the time, and didn't now. And since he had also seen the remains of the huge tree that had caused the damage to that bridge mere hours before they had reached it, he also didn't ask why such an important bridge hadn't yet been repaired.

Thinking back on it, he recalled something else he hadn't paid a lot of attention to at the time. That tree, which had a trunk as big around as two men could reach with their arms, had been torn up by the roots. It hadn't simply washed down into the river, it had been torn up and flung there. He really didn't want to think about the kind of weather that tore up trees by the roots and sent large rivers into flood in a matter of hours.

Once they'd crossed the bridge, they'd found there were no rooms to be had at any of the inns. Everything was full up, in no small part due to the effect the weather was having in disrupting travel during the heaviest months for trade in the year.

So they had pressed on, knowing that once they reached Haven, at least there would be rooms and meals waiting for all of them. But once the sun set, the going had gotten a lot rougher than Karal had thought it would. It was a moonless night, and heavy clouds obscured the stars—that might not trouble a Companion, but poor little Trenor found it rough going, and so, probably, did Honeybee. A couple of handfuls of grain and some grass snatched as they rested was not a satisfactory substitute for his dinner and a good rest in a stall.

Karal's mood matched his horse's, even if he knew the reasons why they were moving on through the middle of the night. At least it was better for Ulrich to ride than to rest beside the road, perverse as it might sound. Honeybee had carried him on all-night rides in worse conditions than this, and while he was riding, his joints stayed warm and flexible because they were being exercised. If they stopped beside the road to rest until the sun came up, he'd be too stiff to move after a night without shelter.

The thick darkness smothered sounds because there were so few visual reference points; even the insects by the side of the road sounded as if they were chirping behind a wall.

"I promise, I've sent messages on ahead of us," Rubrik continued. Karal believed him, even though there was no way he knew of that messages could be racing ahead of them. Except magic, of course, there was always that possibility. Ulrich had been taking it for granted that their escort was reporting regularly to his superiors somehow, so it must be by magic. "There are servants waiting for us, and the Queen's own farrier will be taking care of your gelding as soon as we reach the Palace."

Karal patted Trenor's neck without replying. Tired as the gelding was, he wasn't winded or strained yet. For all of his stumbling, he hadn't actually taken a fall or an injury. A good hot mash inside him, a good blanket covering him, and a warm stall to sleep in, and Trenor should be all right in the morning.

For that matter, I wouldn't turn down a hot mash, a good blanket, and a nice thick bed of straw right now.

"Thank you," he said at last. "I'd rather take care of him myself—but I'm as tired as he is, and I'd do something stupid, like let him drink too much or too fast."

I'm babbling. I'm too tired, and I'm babbling. It's a good thing Rubrik's probably too tired to notice, or he could get anything he wanted out of me right now, just by starting a conversation and letting me run on. Ulrich is too tired to pay any attention to anything I say.

"This is the last rise," Rubrik promised. "It's a long slope downhill from here."

Well, I hope so. Or I will get off and walk.

Rubrik's promise was good; a few moments later, from his vantage point in Trenor's saddle, the lights of Haven appeared as they crested the long hill they'd been climbing for the past half mark and more. There weren't many of those lights, late as it was, but it was obvious from how spread out they were that Haven was a good-sized city. It was possible to guess the general shape and size from here, in fact.

Large. Quite large.

A few years ago, Karal might have been gaping with amazement, but that was before he'd been taken to Sunhame, the capital of Karse and the site of the first and biggest Temple, as was proper for the Throne of Vkandis. Sunhame was at least the size of Haven, and might even be bigger. So he wasn't impressed, except by the fact that the city was closer than he had thought.

"Not long now," Rubrik repeated. "We're almost at the outskirts. With no traffic, we should make excellent time through the city streets once we're within the walls."

Trenor lifted his head and sniffed; he must have liked what he scented because he arched his neck tiredly and picked up his pace a little. Beside him, Honeybee did the same, though her call was not a soft whicker but an asthmatic bray.

"They probably smell the other horses, and possibly the river down there," Ulrich murmured to himself, clearly not even aware that he had spoken aloud.

He's babbling, too. Well, good, if he's that tired, he won't be up first thing in the morning. I may get a chance to sleep in.

The first building that could properly be said to belong to the city appeared on the right; it was too dark to make out what it was, but from the scent of cold, damp clay, smoke, and heated brick, Karal guessed it might belong to a large-scale pot maker or something of the sort.

That, too, was similar to the way that Sunhame was set up_; a lot of tradesfolk on the outskirts, warehouses, even mills and the like. Smiths and manufactories. Not too many people wanted to have their houses where there was noise from people going about their trades, so those trades tended to get shoved to the outskirts of the city.

Other buildings appeared soon after, mostly just unlit shapeless bulks against the sky on either side of the road. One or two candles or lamps burned behind curtains, but not enough to cast any kind of light. The hooves of their beasts echoed dully in the silence, a silence broken only by the occasional bark of a dog or creak of wood from an unseen sign swaying in the scant breeze. A few insects called, but no birds, and no other animals. They might have been riding in a city of the dead.

Karal shivered; he did not like that particular image at all.

A few more lights appeared up ahead, lights which proved to be lanterns mounted on posts outside closely-shuttered shops. There were still more of these lanterns up ahead, evidently placed along the road at regular intervals. As they passed the third set, Karal finally saw a living, waking person approaching—a young man leading a small donkey laden with a pair of stoppered pots and a short ladder.

Now what is that all about?

Karal's question was soon answered. The man took the ladder down off the donkey's back just as they neared him, and propped it against the lantern-post. He waved as soon as he spotted them.

"Evening, Herald!" the man called in a soft, but cheerful voice, without pausing in his climb up to the lantern.

"And a fine evening to you, sir lamptender," Rubrik called back. "They told me wizard-weather is coming in tonight—"

"So I was told, so I was told. I'll be finishing here in a candlemark, I hope. I'd like to be indoors when it hits." The man lifted the pierced metal screen that shielded the lamp wick from wind, and carefully trimmed it, then filled the base of the lamp from a smaller jug at his hip. "This is like to be a nasty storm, the mages say. At least we've got warning now, though they don't seem to be able to do much about it. More's the pity."

Huh. Well, maybe that's why everything is so quiet; everybody's shut their houses up, waiting for the blow. They passed the man as he started down his ladder. He waved farewell to them, but was clearly anxious to finish his job for the night.

Why can't the Valdemaran mages do something about the weather? We can....

"Too much to do, and not enough mages," Rubrik said, his shoulders sagging. "For some reason, weather-working seems to be one of the abilities we don't see often. Weather-witches, the people that can predict weather, we have in plenty now that we know how to train them, but not too many that can fix problems without making them worse elsewhere."

"We have something of a surplus of weather-workers," Ulrich said, very carefully. "It seems to be a talent we Karsites have in abundance. Perhaps it is because our climate would be so uncertain without them."

"I know," Rubrik replied, his voice so tired that Karal couldn't read anything into it at all. "That is one of the first things that Selenay wants to discuss with you. We thought that we would have everything under control once Ancar stopped mucking about with unshielded magic, but things are getting worse, not better. You saw the bridge—"

"Hmm." Ulrich said nothing more, but Karal knew what he was thinking. Aside from all other considerations, Valdemar was a wealthy land by Karsite standards—in the only real wealth that counted, arable land. Karse was hilly, with thin soil that was full of rocks. Valdemar had always had a surplus of grain, meat, animal products. Karse would not be at all displeased to acquire some of that surplus in return for the service of a few weather-workers. That sort of thing hadn't come up in the truce negotiations, and the tentative arrangements for the alliance that followed.

That sort of thing was why he and Ulrich were here now.

That sort of negotiation would be impossible if it weren't for the presence of the Empire looming in the East, an Empire whose magics were legendary.

Not even for food would some of those stiff-necked old sticks be willing to negotiate anything with the Demon-spawn. Only Vkandis and the threat of complete annihilation managed to get them to agree. Well, if we start getting these little incidental negotiations through, perhaps by the time the threat is disposed of, either the old sticks will be dead, or they'll be so used to having deals with the "Demon-spawn" that it won't matter to them anymore.

Still, it seemed odd that Valdemar should be having more magically-induced problems, not less. They had Adept-level mages enough to teach the proper ways of handling and containing magic, and now that Ancar wasn't spreading his sorcerous contamination everywhere, things should have been settling down. Shouldn't they?

Unless there was something else stirring things up.

"I wonder if the Empire has anything to do with this," he wondered aloud, not thinking about what he was saying before he said it.

"To do with what?" Rubrik asked sharply.

Karal flushed hotly, glad that the darkness hid his embarrassment. Stupid; that was twice in a row, and he was going to have to watch himself. And school himself not to talk when he was so tired—his thoughts went straight to his lips without getting examined first. "The—this bad weather, sir," he replied. "The Empire is full of mages, so they say. Could they be sending bad weather at you, to soften you up as a target?"

"It's possible—it's more than possible. I just didn't know something like that could be done at such long distances." Rubrik cursed quietly for a moment. Then he stiffened, stifling a gasp, and Karal realized that the man must still be in a tremendous amount of pain. This business of pressing on was as hard on him as it was on any of them, for all that his Companion seemed as fresh as when he started out this morning.

"It can be done in theory, though no one in Karse ever tried that I know of," Ulrich told him. "There's some mention of such things in older texts on magic, but using magically-induced or steered weather as a weapon is generally considered too unreliable to count on, since it is too easy to counter."

"Unless, of course, your enemy is known for not using magic." Rubrik cursed again. "The Empire's spies surely picked that up, at the very least. They must be laughing up their sleeves at us, if this is their doing. I'll make sure and mention it, just so that someone considers the idea."

"Even if it's sent-weather, a reliable weather-worker can deal with it," Ulrich offered. "The worker doesn't even need to be particularly powerful. I can't tell you if your 'wizard-weather' is sent or created myself; at least not at the moment. I'm too tired, and the probable distance between us and any Empire mages is too great. But if it is something the Empire is causing, that very distance works for us far more than it does the Empire. As far away as they'd be working, they wouldn't be able to stop a minimally-talented weather-worker from getting rid of anything they could send at us. In fact, a minimally talented worker, casting close to the target, can disperse the sendings of someone much more powerful than he is."

"That is good to know." For all his weariness, Rubrik sounded grateful. "Please, in case I forgot to tell this to someone, make sure you do."

"Take note, Karal," Ulrich told his aide, who filed it carefully away in his memory. He would, some time within the next two days or so, make certain that this whole bit of conversation was included in the notes that Ulrich would take into a discussion with Valdemar's leaders.

"What is that?" Ulrich asked, as Karal repeated everything to himself once, just to be certain he had it all. Karal looked up_; there seemed to be something awfully large across their path, and it was much too big to be a building. There were lights across the top of it, lights that might be torches or lanterns. How high was it? Several stories, at least. Well, this part of Haven rated some admiration, at least.

"The old city walls," Rubrik replied, with relief in his voice. "They mark the boundary of the original city of Haven. We are almost home."

The walls were impressive; quite thick, as demonstrated by the tunnel beneath them with gates at either end.

And manned by competent, alert Guards, as demonstrated by the ones that stopped them. They were detained at the gate long enough for the Guard Captain to look through a set of papers, scratch something with a stick of graphite, and wave them through.

"Efficient," Ulrich noted. Rubrik only nodded.

Looks as if they really were waiting for us—

By now the lights along the side of the road were frequent enough that neither they nor their mounts had any trouble seeing, and once inside the walls, there were further signs of life. Taverns were still open—music and the sound of voices came from windows open to whatever breeze might happen by. Here and there an industrious tradesman burned candles to finish a task. The scent of baking bread told Karal that bakers in Haven were no different from those in Sunhame—they did most of their work late at night, when it was cooler. Here and there they even crossed paths with a huge, heavy cart hitched to a team of four or more enormous draft-horses, hauling wagonloads of barrels and huge crates about that could not be transported during the heavy traffic of full day.

The streets here were paved, covered with something smooth that didn't resemble cobblestones or any other form of pavement Karal recognized. Rubrik looked around at the fronts of the buildings, though, and frowned.

"This storm is likely to be worse than I was told," he said, after a moment or two. "Look how all the shutters are up, and I think they've been latched on the inside."

Karal nodded, finally realizing why the place had seemed so dead and so quiet. Most windows were firmly shuttered against whatever weather was coming; shutters that would shut out light and sound from within as well as weather from without. "Is that unusual at this time of year?" he asked.

"Very," Rubrik said shortly.

Well, if they are expecting the kind of storm that ripped a huge tree up by the roots, if I lived here, I'd shutter my windows too. Better a night spent behind shutters than to have a window blown in—or worse, find something storm-flung coming through it.

It seemed to Karal that they were spending a lot of time winding back and forth; far more time than was necessary. He started looking around, craning his neck, trying to see if there was a shorter way to the Palace anywhere. Great Light, he hadn't even seen the Palace, and if this was Sunhame, they'd be looking right down the Grand Boulevard straight at it!

"Haven wasn't built like Sunhame," Ulrich said in a low voice, as he continued to search for some sign that they were nearing their goal. "It was built on strictly defensive lines. I'm told that the Palace was originally a true fortress, that it's not a great deal taller than many of the homes of the high-ranked and the wealthy. And the streets here were planned to make invasion difficult, even if an army penetrated the outer walls. The streets all wind around and around the city_; there is no direct way to the Palace or to any other important building."

Where Sunhame was built as a place of worship first; the Temple is the center of the city, the Palace of the Son of the Sun a part of the Temple, and all roads lead directly there. Sunhame was planned as a stylized solar disk, in fact; the main buildings were placed in a circle in the center of the city, and the main streets all radiated from that circle. He could only hope that the minds of these Valdemarans were not as twisted and indirect as their streets.

At least the quality of shops and houses was steadily increasing, which was a good sign that they were nearing their goal.

Eventually the shops and taverns vanished altogether, leaving only the walled homes of the great and wealthy. Finally, just when he thought for sure that Rubrik was leading them in a circle, that they were hopelessly lost in this maze and that they would never find their way out again, they came to another wall.

This one was much shorter than the first, a bare two stories tall. If it was manned, Karal saw no signs of guards, although there were lanterns hung high on iron brackets. They were high enough to be above the heads of any riders who followed the street beside the wall, and seemed easily within the reach of someone walking along the top to service them.

There was a large building on the other side. Before Karal could ask anything, however, they came to a small gate—so very small that he could easily have passed right by it.

"Heyla, Rubrik!" a cheerful young man in a livery of lighter blue than any Karal had seen before hailed their escort. "What, bringing the envoy in by the kitchen entrance? That's hardly the way to treat an ally!"

Karal stiffened at the implied insult, but Rubrik just aimed a kick at the Guard. "You insolent idiot! This isn't the kitchen entrance, it's the Privy Gate, and well you know it, Adem! What are you trying to do, start another war with Karse for me?"

Karal relaxed. The Guard just laughed and unlocked the gate. "Come now, those stiff-necked fellows probably don't speak a word of our—"

"Oh, I speak your tongue well enough to know that you mean no harm, but you ought to learn to mind your manners, young lad," Ulrich said in a casual tone. "With so many foreigners coming to your Queen, you should learn never to assume they are ignorant of your language, and guard your tongue accordingly."

The Guard whirled, turning as pale as the bleached stone of the wall, and started to stammer an apology.

But Rubrik interrupted him, turning in his saddle to look fully at Ulrich. "Well, my Lord Priest? It was you who he insulted by his cavalier manner, so I leave it to you to decide how many weeks he is suspended."

He spoke in his own tongue so that there could be no misunderstanding by the Guard. Ulrich pondered the question for a moment and answered in the same language. "I believe you should report him—but do not repeat his exact words," the Priest said, very carefully. "Say only that he was not—ah—professional, and that he acted that way on the assumption that we did not know your language. He means no harm, I think, but such behavior could be construed as an insult. In fact, I believe that the best punishment to recommend would be that he must learn the rudiments of our tongue!"

Rubrik looked down at the trembling Guard, who Karal now saw was certainly no older than he was. "You heard him, Adem. You'll be on report in the morning, and they'll probably put you on stable duty for a fortnight, but that's less than you deserve. You represent the Queen at this post, whether or not it's the dead of night and you never see anyone, and you had better remember that."

The Guard saluted smartly, and pushed the gate open for them, standing aside and keeping his eyes straight ahead. "Yes, sir!" he said, his voice still shaky, but relief obvious in his eyes. "Absolutely, sir!"

Rubrik went through the gate first, followed by Ulrich. The Guard looked up as the Priest passed.

"Thank you, sir," he said, very softly.

Ulrich nodded, and allowed a ghost of a smile to cross his lips as he nudged Honeybee through the gate.

Karal followed, and the Guard closed and locked the gate behind them with a creak of iron hinges and the clatter of a key in a massive lock. Ahead of them was a long, stone-surfaced path that led to the enormous building Karal had glimpsed above the wall. This structure was illuminated on the outside by carefully placed lanterns.

Very carefully placed lanterns—guards on patrol would be able to see every corner of the outside, there would be no place to hide. And they don't blend in with the exterior—I wonder if the Queen has had some unpleasant visitors in the recent past?

It was apparent now that the area enclosed by the wall was far larger than he had supposed. It was huge, in fact—it looked even bigger than the city itself. There even seemed to be a forest of some kind off to the left—

But it was to the right that his attention was drawn, to the multistoried, gray stone building there, and the group of people coming up the path to meet them.

At least four of these were servants, but there were two men dressed in rich clothing, and two more in the white uniforms that Karal now knew meant they were Heralds.

Rubrik turned to Ulrich as the group approached. "Thank you for your understanding, sir. Young Adem is well-intentioned, and as you surmised he meant no harm, but he's also known me since he was a babe, and he's highborn and inclined to be very cavalier about rank. He volunteered for the Guards, but I'm afraid he still thinks things like sentry duty are something of a joke."

Ulrich shrugged, but Karal could tell that he wasn't displeased. "Well, really, one can afford to be cavalier about rank when one has it, true? If he's going to be mucking out stables for a fortnight, I think that's likely to teach him all he needs to learn from this little experience."

Rubrik nodded, and the Companion tossed his head and uttered what sounded a lot like a laugh. "I'll be leaving you here, sir. It has been a pleasure escorting you. I hope we will be able to meet socially in the future."

"I have enjoyed your company, and I shall make a point of meeting you when leisure permits," Ulrich said with emphasis, then turned toward the group approaching them.

Rubrik straightened in his saddle as best he could; the group stopped just beyond his Companion's nose. Karal noted that he didn't dismount, and neither did Ulrich—but it didn't appear that anyone expected them to. "My Lord Priest Ulrich, Envoy of Her Holiness of Karse, Son of the Sun Solaris, the Prophet of Vkandis, may I present to you Lord Palinor, Seneschal of Valdemar and the Seneschal's Herald, Kyril—"

The two older men bowed; the Seneschal was marginally younger than his Herald, a trifle taller, and a bit less in shape. And every bit the diplomat. In body type he was neither thin nor fat, nor was he either exceptionally handsome or ugly. The grandeur of his robes made up for his otherwise unremarkable exterior. The Herald, on the other side, was as memorable a person as Karal had ever seen—from his erect carriage to his iron-gray hair, his chiseled features to his direct way of gazing straight into the eyes of the person he spoke to. Karal did not think too many people ever had the temerity to lie to this man.

"I am gratified that you meet me in person, my lords," Ulrich said, his own demeanor as professional and diplomatic as that of the Seneschal. "In fact, I am flattered, on my own behalf and on that of my ruler. It is very late, and—" he paused to gaze significantly upward, "—I am given to understand that there is unpleasant weather expected at any moment."

"Too damned true," muttered the other man in the Heraldic uniform. Then, despite the rising wind he stepped forward and bowed. Rubrik raised his eyebrows in shocked surprise.

He recovered quickly. "And the ah—entirely accurate gentleman, is Prince-Consort Daren, Queen Selenay's personal representative."

This was the Prince? In Herald livery? Karal was too well-schooled to gape with shock, but he very nearly bit his tongue. Rubrik had clearly not expected any of the royals to meet them out here, or he surely would have warned them. Karal was all too conscious of how shabby and unkempt he and his master must look after riding since dawn.

Prince Daren smiled, and echoed his gesture. "You are most welcome and well-come, my Lord Priest Ulrich. I was afraid that if I did not come in person, this initial meeting might degenerate into a minor diplomatic event, and if you will forgive my being as blunt as the soldier that I am—"

A chill wind screamed up out of nowhere, whipping their cloaks and making even the tired horse and mule dance and shy. Leaves torn from the nearby trees, and dust and sand pelted them. A growl of thunder in the distance warned that the storm was at hand; a flash of lightning told it was coming on as fast as the wind could blow it.

Thank Vkandis for the Prince! He's the only one here with rank enough to override diplomatic protocol without making it an insult, and he knows it!

"—that 'weather' you mentioned is going to drench us all if we don't get you under cover!" Prince Daren shouted over the howling of the wind.

Neither Ulrich nor Karal needed any further prompting; they dismounted as quickly as Ulrich's aged bones and Karal's weary ones permitted, surrendering their mounts into the hands of the servants. Then, as fat, icy drops of rain splattered onto the path, they surrendered all pretense of dignity, gathered their robes and cloaks around them, and all ran for the shelter of the Palace.

Prince Daren proved to be a far more graceful politician than he claimed; he cut through protocol with a smile and an eye to their comfort, sacrificing his own dignity to preserve Ulrich's. "I'm just a blunt soldier, and I don't hold with a lot of this political dancing about," were words that were often on his lips, and neither Karal nor his master believed them for a moment—but paying lip service to those words made it possible to retain the respect due to their office while at the same time getting things done with dispatch. By common consent, proper diplomatic maneuvering was deferred to the next day. Prince Daren showed them personally to their suite, and left them there after demonstrating the system of bells that summoned servants.

"It's late. You need food and rest in that order, my lords," he said as he departed. "And your proper reception will take place at your convenience. Selenay and I will make certain that one of us is free for you to make the appropriate presentation of your credentials tomorrow. When you are ready, send word. This alliance is very important to us, and it is equally important that everything be done properly so the quibblers have less to wag their tongues about."

All things considered, it was an auspicious beginning for continued relations.

The suite of rooms they had been granted, on the second story of the Palace and in the section reserved for other ambassadors, was far above anything that Karal had experienced, even as Ulrich's secretary. It was composed of a total of five rooms. They had their own bathing room with an indoor water closet, two private bedrooms, a casual sitting room, and a reception room quite elegantly appointed. The suite was arranged in an odd pattern; they entered at the reception room, which led to the sitting room to the right. Then came the bedrooms, with the bathing room between them. The reception room and the sitting room were rather longer than they were wide, which might prove useful. Someone had pulled the shutters closed over the windows, so there was no way to tell what kind of view they had—if any—but from the hideous noise of hail pounding the wooden shutters, Karal was just as glad. There was a fine five-course meal waiting for them in the sitting room, and a servant who spoke some rudimentary Karsite to serve them, a young man, strongly built, with a thatch of thick, black hair and a pair of bushy eyebrows as thick as Karal's ring-finger.

They settled into chairs on either side of a small table, and the servant filled their plates, then excused himself to draw a hot bath for his guests' comfort.

Karal was hungry enough to have eaten the plates along with the savory roast chicken and succulent steamed roots. Ulrich barely picked at his meal, though, which told Karal that his master needed that hot bath very badly, and bed just as much. He always lost his appetite when his joints pained him.

"Don't bother with that, sir," Karal said, as Ulrich brought the same forkful of food to his mouth and laid it back down for the third time. "Go get into the bath; I'll fix one of those little bread pockets for you, mix up your medicine, and bring both to you."

Ulrich did not even argue which told Karal that his master was in more pain than he had thought. He allowed the servant to guide him into the bathing room, help him disrobe, and get into the bath.

The servant took himself into the master bedroom; Karal ate in silence for a little longer, then, when he reckoned that Ulrich had warmed and relaxed enough for his appetite to return, cut a slice of breast meat and laid it inside a sliced-open roll. A trickle of the white sauce followed it, and some thin slices of roots. Their saddlebags had arrived by that point, and before the servant took them to the proper rooms, he got Ulrich's medicines, poured a glass of sweet, white wine, and mixed the powders into it.

He brought both to Ulrich, who lay back in the bath with the lines of pain and strain slowly easing from his face. His master looked up at his footsteps, and managed a smile.

"Food first," Karal told him. "If you drink this, you might fall asleep before you manage to eat."

"Especially on an empty stomach." Ulrich accepted the bread pocket and managed to eat all of it, which surprised and gratified Karal. When Ulrich was truly exhausted, he often lost all semblance of appetite, and had to be reminded that he had to eat. When the last crumb was gone, the Priest held out his hand for the wine glass, and downed it in a single gulp.

"Be a good lad and call that servant to help me out now, would you?" his master said, when the last of the potion was gone. "You go finish your meal—and mine, if you've a mind to. I'll be going straight to bed, I think."

Karal went to the sitting room to do just that. "The Envoy needs some help getting to bed, please," he said in careful Valdemaran. "He's not young, and he has just had medicine that will make him sleepy."

The servant nodded. "Yes, sir," the young man replied. "Ah, I believe you should know that we servants assigned to you and your master are not precisely ordinary. We're Heraldic trainees."

Karal raised an eyebrow himself at that, but nodded, slowly. So, that explained why this young man's clothing, though gray, looked very much like the livery that Rubrik wore. "Well, neither of us is likely to offend any of you by being unreasonable or demanding; frankly, I'm more used to serving than being served, and my master is a Priest and does not usually have any servant other than myself."

Let him make what he will of that. It can't do any harm to be thought ascetic. It might make people think twice about trying to bribe us; a true Priest is as hard to sway by material offerings as the statue of Vkandis.

The young man smiled shyly. "My name is Arnod, sir. I'll be on night duty. Day duty will be either Johen or Lysle. Would you like a Healer to look at your master?"

Karal gave it a moment of thought, then shook his head. "No, he'll be all right once he gets into bed. It was just a very long ride, and this storm isn't helping matters any."

As if to emphasize that, the wind shook the shutters, a violent rattle that sounded for all the world as if an angry giant had seized them and was tugging on them.

"Let me get the Envoy into his bed, then, and I'll return to see if there's anything you need." With a glance at the shutters, Arnod left Karal alone with the half-finished meal.

Karal quickly made certain that it became a finished meal, although he ignored the rest of the wine in favor of water. He knew what would happen if, as tired as he was now, he drank wine.

I'll sleep for two days and wake up with the world's worst headache.

The sitting room was as well-appointed as it was comfortable; two chairs, a couch for lounging, the table, a desk, and a fireplace shared with the reception room on the other side of the wall. Hard to tell in the soft light from the candles, but he thought it had all been decorated in neutral tones of gray and cream. There were no rushes on the floor, but the hard wood was softened by attractive rugs with geometric designs woven into them.

It was interesting that Heralds-in-training should be assigned instead of Palace servants, however. That might be a good sign.

It might also be a sign that the authorities did not trust the servants around a pair of Karsites. Or these almost-Heralds could be a not-so-subtle way of keeping an eye on the Envoys, and an ear in their midst.

It is also possible that they are doing us some kind of honor, he mused. It is hard to say. The only thing he could be sure of was that this Arnod fellow—who was perhaps seventeen—seemed to be a likable enough chap on the surface, not at all put out by being made into a servant. That would make things easier on all of them. Arnod could make things uncomfortable for them if he resented his current position.

Arnod reappeared about the time Karal polished off the remains of Ulrich's custard. "The Envoy fell asleep as soon as I got him into the bed," the young man said, his black brows furrowing together with concern. "Is that right? Should he have done that?"

Karal mentally reckoned up the effect of the medicines when taken with Ulrich's exhaustion, and nodded. "It's mostly that we had been riding since before dawn_; we've been almost twenty marks in the saddle, and that's hard on him."

Arnod winced. "It's a good thing you didn't stop, though, if you'll forgive my saying so. We got word that the bridge at Loden is out; if you'd waited there tonight, you'd have had to go clear up to Poldara to cross in the morning. You'd have been another week getting here." His brows knitted. "I'm not being too forward, am I? Tell me if I am, please—I'm not used to this serving business, but they thought you and I might have a bit in common, since my da raised horses."

Karal laughed, a little startled at the young man's open, easy manner, and Arnod gave him a tentative grin. "Oh, just be as respectful to Lord Ulrich as you would to any Priest that you honor, and I think it will be fine. Like I told you, I am not used to having a servant around, or to being served by anyone. The reverse, in fact." He shared a conspiratorial grin with Arnod. "You see, my father was the stablemaster at an inn."

It was a very good thing that he and Ulrich had a chance to practice their Valdemaran with Rubrik on the journey up here—Arnod's Karsite was barely adequate to manage simple requests. A conversation like this one would have been impossible.

The wind pounded on the shutters again, and sent hail pounding against it in a futile effort to get through. Karal felt more relaxed than he had been in a long time.

Unless these "servants" are far, far more subtle than anyone I've ever heard of before, they're probably nothing more than they seem. They certainly are not accustomed to the kinds of intriguing I've seen in Ulrich's service. No, I think that while they certainly will be reporting what we say and do to their leaders, Ulrich and I can assume they are not expert spies.

That was a relief, a great relief. So great a relief that he relaxed enough to yawn.

"Oh—I drew you a bath, sir—" Arnod began.

"Karal. Just Karal," Karal corrected. "My master is 'sir,' or 'my lord.' I'm just a novice, I haven't taken any vows, and I'm not highborn, so I'm just plain 'Karal.'"

Arnod nodded, earnestly. "Right—I drew you a bath, Karal, I figured you'd want it when you finished eating. Can I get you anything else, or shall I just clear the plates away and let you get that bath and some sleep?" He hesitated a moment, then added, "We have a pair of guards stationed on this corridor, outside your doors. Not just for your benefit, but all the ambassadors. You won't have to worry about your safety."

Oh, and by the way, don't try to get out to prowl around. Right, well, that's the last thing on my mind. If Solaris wanted spies here, she'd have sent someone other than us.

"Bath and sleep," Karal said firmly—or he would have, if he hadn't had to yawn right in the middle of the sentence. Arnod chuckled and began picking up the dishes even as Karal got up to go find that hot bath.

He was impressed all over again by the bathing chamber; tiled in clean white ceramic, it contained a tub large enough to relax in, supplied by heated water from some system of pipes and a wood-fired copper boiler. It also contained an indoor, water-flow privy, an amenity Karal had come to appreciate after living with Ulrich. Especially on a night like this one. Going out to a privy, or even to a Jakes on the outside wall, would have required more courage than he thought he had. The mere idea of that cold, hail-laden wind coming at one's tenderest parts....

Wouldn't need to take a vow of chastity after that. I wouldn't have anything left to be unchaste with.

When he returned, warm and dry and relaxed in every muscle, Arnod and the remains of dinner were both gone, and all but one of the candles in the sitting room had been blown out. Karal made his way across the chamber to his own room, smaller than Ulrich's, and with one wall on the outer hallway where the guards supposedly prowled. His room would presumably shield his master's from any intrusive sounds from the hall—and any sounds from the hall would wake him up so that he could defend his master if need be. Of course, this meant that he had no window in his room, but tonight he didn't want one. The howling of the wind and the roar of rain on the shutters was quite clear enough.

Candles had been left burning in his room, and a set of bedclothes had been laid out for him—a sign that their luggage had arrived safely. Thanks be to Vkandis, indeed. If they did not have the appropriate clothing, they could not be formally presented without disgracing themselves and their ruler.

And besides, there were a dozen books in there he'd been wanting to read.

Good. One less thing to worry about.

He dropped the towel he had wrapped around himself and pulled the soft, loose shirt and breeches on, blowing out all the candles but one and climbing into bed. The bed had been warmed, a welcome, if unexpected touch, and the candle nearest the bed gave off a delicate fragrance as well as light.

I could get used to living like this, he decided. It was a far cry from sleeping in the stable, or the hard pallets in the Children's Cloister. There was a lot to be said for the life of an envoy. He blew out the bedside candle, and lay back in the warm embrace of what had to be a real featherbed.

This is beginning to feel like undeserved luxury, actually. I haven't done a thing yet to earn all this.

On the other hand, the real work was about to begin—not physical labor, but mental. Tomorrow, in addition to his work as a secretary, Ulrich would begin asking him to watch certain people, or take note of situations, and he would be expected to make accurate observations. When they were presented formally to the Valdemaran Court, it would be his job to remember the names, the faces, the positions, and the identifying characteristics. Then there would be long diplomatic meetings, during which he would be taking mental notes—and later, transcribing those notes into an accurate copy of what was actually said.

No, this was not unearned luxury after all, now that he thought it all over. He could foresee, without recourse to a mage-mirror or a scrying crystal, that there would be days when he would not see this bed until well past the midnight hour.

Then again—in some ways, everything in this world is paid for, in the end....

But before he could ponder that any further, he fell asleep.

* * *

"Watch the Heralds," Ulrich said, just before they left their suite the next morning. Only that, but it was all the direction that Karal needed. Ulrich had trained his secretary well; Karal did not need to be told the rest of his job.

Ulrich would be watching the Prince and the other officials of Valdemar during this first day of introductions and preliminary negotiations. He wanted Karal to keep a covert eye on the other power in this land, the power that never quite revealed itself openly but had a hand in literally everything.

The Heralds. Even a Karsite knew that much.

He was the perfect person to perform that particular task; it was not likely that anyone would pay a great deal of attention to him. He was only the secretary, after all, of no importance, and furthermore, no older than the callow lads who had been assigned to serve them. He could not possibly be hiding anything.

Well, he wasn't. He doubted that he could ever successfully conceal the fact that he knew something, if anyone ever entrusted him with a real secret. But he didn't have to hide anything; all he had to do was watch passively.

They rose late—for Ulrich, at least, who was used to rising at dawn. A new young man, who introduced himself as "Johen" but otherwise was as silent as Arnod had been talkative, brought them their breakfast and took away Ulrich's request for the formal presentation.

He returned with the word that it would be agreeable to everyone if that presentation could be made at the regular Court session in a mark. Or "candlemark," as the Valdemarans reckoned time. Easy enough to judge, since the candle that had been left burning all night was a time-candle—marked off at regular intervals. As near as Karal could judge, the Valdemaran "candlemark" and the Karsite "mark" as reckoned by water-clock were about the same length.

Since immediate reception was precisely what Ulrich had hoped for, they sent Johen off with word of their agreement. They both dressed with care for the occasion; fine velvet robes that had been especially created for their roles as both Priest and Novice, and Envoy and Secretary. There was a great deal more gold and embroidery than Karal personally felt comfortable with; he rather liked the simple, short black woolen robes, sashes, and breeches that those who served Vkandis normally wore. But he was a representative of Her Holiness—it was right and proper that he should look like a representative of Her Holiness.

Besides, Ulrich was laden with three times the gold braid and embroidery that he had to endure. He didn't even want to think about the amount of ecclesiastical jewelry Ulrich was carrying; it was enough to make his shoulders ache just looking at it.

Johen brought a young Guard to serve as their escort to the Court chamber, or whatever it was that the Valdemarans called it. The Throne Room, Karal had thought he'd heard Johen say. This second Herald-in-training spoke a lot faster than Arnod, and it was harder to follow him.

The Guard left them at the door, which was wide open, and they simply took their places among the other people gathered there. They stood out among the Valdemaran courtiers like a pair of crows in an aviary of exotic birds. As they waited their turn to be summoned before Queen Selenay, there was a little space around them, a degree of separation from the rest of the Court that clearly showed that most Valdemarans were still not altogether sure of their new allies.

Watch the Heralds, Ulrich had said. Karal kept his eyes humbly down, but he watched the people around him through his lashes. There were not too many Heralds out here among the courtiers—one, standing beside a man who looked like a soldier, and a second, female Herald in a very strange and exotic white outfit, chatting with the first. There were three up on the dais with the Queen—well, five, if you counted the Queen and her Consort as well. Another surprise, that—the Queen wore a variation on the white livery, as well as the Prince. One Herald he already recognized; that was Talia, who had come to Karse herself as the representative of Selenay. Not a bad idea, really, although there were Guards in their blue and silver uniforms everywhere in this room, standing at rigid attention along the walls.

The last two he dismissed, at least temporarily. If they were standing there in any capacity other than as guards, it was probably to do the same task that Ulrich had assigned to him—watch. He would learn nothing from their faces which would wear the same receptive blankness that his would.

No, he would concentrate on Talia and the other two, the man who shadowed the richly-dressed warrior, and the fascinating, peculiar white-clad woman.

He would have watched the latter just out of sheer curiosity. If he was a gilded crow in this aviary, she was the exotic bird-of-prey. For all her fancy plumage, the deliberate way that she moved and the implicit confidence of her carriage warned him that she would be dangerous in any situation, and that very little would ever escape her notice. She looked far too young to have that mane of silvered hair, though; that was strange.

Then he recalled his magic lessons, rudimentary as they were. Ah. She may be an Adept; handling node-magic bleaches the hail and eyes. Ulrich's hair had gone all to gray and silver before he reached middle age, his master had told him. So, if she was an Adept, who was she? There weren't that many Adept-level mages in Valdemar, after all.

The reference points quickly fell together for him_; the exotic garb, the age, the deference with which she was treated....

That's Lady Elspeth. The one the who went away to find mage-training in far-off lands, and returned with more than mere magic.

There was some commotion at the door, and more people entered; people... and things.

The sea of courtiers parted with respect tinged with just a little fear, making way for an odd party indeed. There were two men, both silver-haired, both dressed in costumes as foreign and elaborate as Lady Elspeth's. Neither of the costumes was white, however, and compared to them, her outfit was quite conservative. The younger and handsomer of the two was the more flamboyant, in layered silks of a dozen different shades of emerald green_; the second contented himself with garments cut more closely to his body, in the colors of the deep forest.

But they paled beside the creatures that followed; a huge, wolflike gray beast the size of a newborn calf, and—

—a gryphon—

Oh, my. Oh, Lord Vkandis.

He stared, his heart racing, as he took in the near-mythical beast. He felt very much the same way as he had when he had first seen Hansa—except that the Firecat was nowhere near this big.

Even after the descriptions, Karal realized he had not been prepared for the reality. For one thing, this creature was huge, as tall as a draft horse, and its crest-feathers brushed the top of the sill as it passed through the double doors to the Throne Room. For another, it was unexpectedly beautiful. It was not, as he had imagined, some kind of put-together thing, a bit of cat, a handful of eagle. No, it was itself. If he hadn't known any better, he would have said it had been designed by the hand of an artist.

It had a head that was something like a raptor's, except for the greatly enlarged skull, with a wicked beak he would not have wanted to get in the way of; the tightly-folded wings would be enormous when unfurled. The four legs ended in formidable talons—he noted with slightly hysterical amusement that someone had constructed talon-sheaths, wooden-tipped and laced across the back, so that the ends didn't damage the wooden floor. In color it was a golden-brown, with shadings of pure metallic gold and darker sable. And when it turned and he caught its huge, golden eyes, he lost any last bit of doubt that this was a creature every bit as intelligent as he was. There was not just intelligence in those eyes, there was humor there as well, and a powerful personality. It looked him over, unblinking, then transferred its regard to his master, pupils expanding and contracting a little as it focused its gaze.

The entrance of this little cavalcade seemed to be all that anyone had been waiting for—Court proceeded briskly from then on.

He and Ulrich were evidently the center point of this session of Court; there was some ordinary enough business, dealt with efficiently and quickly, and then the majordomo beside the dais called them forward.

Karal followed behind his master, keeping his mind blank and receptive. He already knew what Ulrich would be doing; there were documents to present, authorizations, copies of the existing treaties. Ulrich would be telling the Queen, in a suitably flowery and elaborate speech, just how much Solaris welcomed the opportunity to change the truce into a true alliance. The Queen would respond in the same way.

This time, at least, there would be truth behind the speeches, at least on the Karsite side of the equation.

Maybe on the Valdemaran, given that storm last night, and the Prince's assurances. From the damage he'd seen to the gardens from their window, the storm had been fully powerful enough to make people concerned. There had been at least one uprooted tree, and many thick branches broken and tossed about like wood chips. It appeared that Karse, in the form of its weather-mages, had something Valdemar needed very badly.

So, there would be truth enough on the Queen's part as well. Enough to overcome centuries of hatred?

From the thoughtful look on Herald Talia's face—yes. There, if anywhere, was the proof of sincerity. Talia was of Holderkin stock, and had grown up on the border with Karse. If she could forgive Karsite depredations enough to become an honorary member of their very religion, it was possible that anyone could, given enough incentive.

Ulrich made his graceful speech, the Queen made hers; Karal didn't pay much attention. He was watching Talia closely. She was paying no attention to Ulrich after the first few moments of his speech. Instead, her eyes wandered over the envoy's head, for all the world as if assessing the temper of the rest of the courtiers.

There wasn't much to read in her thoughtful expression, however; it seemed to be just as carefully blank as his own.

"If you have no objection, my Lord Priest," the Queen was saying as he pulled his attention back to the work at hand, "I should like to take this opportunity to present you to the other dignitaries of this Court, and the representatives of our other allies and friends."

So that's why the gryphon and the rest showed up! As Ulrich accepted—after all, this was precisely what the Priest had hoped would take place—the crowd of courtiers reshuffled itself, and Karal found himself standing at Ulrich's elbow in a formal receiving line.

Now I earn my good dinner and soft bed! Ulrich would be depending on his trained memory to keep track of everyone introduced to them. Well, that was why he was here.

The full Council paraded by first, beginning with the Seneschal, Lord Palinor, whom they had met last night. Then came the Lord Marshal, who proved to be the military-looking fellow that Lady Elspeth had been speaking with. He was followed by a horsey woman, Lady Cathan, who represented the Guilds, and she in her turn was followed by a relatively young cleric, Father Ricard, who turned out to be the Lord Patriarch, the putative leader of all religious organizations in Valdemar.

Huh. I'll believe that when I see it! Never yet saw two priests of two different religions able to agree on anything, not even that the sun was shining!

But it was not his duty to pass judgment; just to remember who these people were.

There were more representatives from the four "quarters" of the country, then came the other Powers. The Heralds—the ones with offices.

Kyril, the Seneschal's Herald. A man who appeared to be Talia's age, tall, and strongly built, named (oddly enough) Griffon, who was the Lord Marshal's Herald. Another older man, Herald Teren, Dean of the Collegium (whatever that was). Lady Elspeth, "Herald to the Outlanders," which was a title just as puzzling; he could not imagine why she was not titled "princess" or "heir." Another very formidable woman, tall, and blond, who carried herself with completely unconscious authority, Herald Captain Kerowyn, a woman he had heard so many tales of he could not even count them all. Names he knew of from his briefings, and his discussions with Rubrik, names he could now put faces to.

Then the other envoys and ambassadors—from Rethwellan, J'katha and Ruvan, from the Hardorn court in exile (what there was of it), from the Outland Guilds, from the Mercenary's Guild, from the White Winds and Blue Mountain mage-schools—

And the most exotic. A hawk-faced woman, blue-eyed and ebony-haired with golden skin, dressed in deep blue trews and wrapped jacket, Querna shena Tale'sedrin, envoy from the wild Shin'a'in of the Dhorisha Plains. Behind her, the flamboyant, silver-haired beauty of a man in the emerald-green costume, who proved to be one Firesong k'Treva, Adept and Envoy of the Tayledras.

The wolflike creature was also an envoy—Rris, who represented not only his own species, the kyree, but others, tervaidi, hertasi, and dyheli. Ulrich nodded, as if he knew precisely what those creatures might be, but Karal knew he'd be doing some quick scuttling about, to ferret out descriptions and, hopefully, pictures later.

And last of all of the ambassadors, the gryphon.

The magnificent creature bent his head to acknowledge Ulrich's bow of respect, and opened a beak quite sufficient to take the envoy's head off. "I am Trrreyvan," the creature said in Valdemaran, and Karal could have sworn that it smiled. "I am mosssst pleasssed to make yourrr acquaintance. I believe we have a mutual frrriend? A Red-robe Priesst called Sssig-frrrid?"

Ulrich's mask of polite geniality turned into a real smile. "Indeed we do," he replied warmly. "I had hoped to find someone here who worked with him, sir gryphon, but I did not expect it to be you!"

The gryphon did smile. "We ssshall trrrade talesss and trrrack down Sssigfrrrid, laterrr, I think," he said, and bowed again.

The gryphon moved off gracefully, leaving only the courtiers to be presented. None of these were especially interesting; Karal simply memorized names and faces as they moved past.

Finally, it was over. The Queen dismissed the Court and departed with her entourage, after inviting Ulrich to present himself to her privately after the noon meal. By then, the exotics had dispersed, leaving no one that Ulrich wanted or needed to speak with.

As the courtiers filed out of the Throne Room, Ulrich finally looked over at his young protege. "I've had enough for an hour or two, at least," he said in Karsite. "Would it shatter your heart if we had our meal in our room, rather than with the Queen and Court?"

Karal thought of all those eyes, curious, occasionally hostile; thought of trying to choke down a meal with all of them watching him, and shuddered. This position was far more public than he had thought. Ulrich chuckled. "I will take that as a 'no,' and leave the arrangements up to you," he said. "Meanwhile, I will go consult with Herald Talia and discover if this is to be an informal or a formal meeting."

"I'll see to it," Karal said, taking that as his dismissal. Evidently they no longer required a Guard; he was allowed to leave the Throne Room and return to their suite without one.

After he rang the bell for the servant, he went to the desk in the sitting room, where he had just this morning laid out pen and paper. By the time the servant arrived, Karal had already begun on the list of dignitaries they had just met. He ordered a meal to be served in the room with all the absentminded confidence of someone who was actually used to having a servant at his beck and call, and it wasn't until after the young man disappeared that he realized what he had just done.

The thought made him stop in his tracks. For just a moment, he was stunned. He had only been in this land a few short days, and already it was changing him.

He could not help but wonder where the changes would lead.