"So—there was nothing left of the False One?" An'desha had listened, completely enthralled, to Karal's tale of how the Son of the Sun came to power. There was something oddly comforting in the notion that there were other peoples whose deities tended to express themselves as directly as the Star-Eyed did. More directly, in fact, although An'desha could not even begin to envision how a false prophet could ever set himself up as sole authority to the Shin'a'in, much less how an entire succession of them could have. The Star-Eyed would have been much more likely to have arranged for the first fool to be eaten by something large and predatory before he ever became a problem.
"Nothing. Just a pile of smoldering ashes." Karal nodded. "It was quite—ah—daunting. It made me certain that I never wanted to find myself receiving the Sunlord's direct regard. I will be quite happy to remain in obscurity!"
"I can well understand that," An'desha replied. "The Star-Eyed is—a little more subtle." That may be the understatement of the century. Kal'enel is not inclined to strike people dead with lightning even at Her angriest.
The serene little indoor garden had become their meeting place; they were reasonably certain of being left alone there, and since An'desha and Firesong already practiced all magic there, it was one place where An'desha felt relatively confident. And no matter what the weather—which continued to be uncertain—it was always balmy summer in this miniature Vale.
He noted that Karal was no longer wincing whenever he mentioned the Shin'a'in Goddess, and his dark eyes no longer clouded with unease. Poor Karal. He was so shocked at first to learn that Vkandis might not be the One True God.
"But then again," An'desha continued with a shrug. "She and He are both gods so who are we to say what they will and will not do? For all that I was touched by the Star-Eyed's own hand, I am still hardly qualified to judge Her or Her probable actions."
Karal coughed politely. An'desha took the hint.
"Speaking of probable actions—I spoke with Ulrich about you." Karal waited for An'desha's reaction.
His reaction would have been enthusiastic enough to satisfy anyone. Excitement sent a chill along his arms. "Will he come? Has he time? Does he think he can help?" An'desha had spent enough time delving back into the memories of Falconsbane's previous lives to feel as if the already uncertain ground beneath him had become a quagmire. He couldn't help thinking that only extreme good fortune had kept him from stepping into a bottomless pit that would swallow him up before he could cry out for help. He'd had a particularly hag-ridden nightmare last night, after yet another stroll through the memory-fragments of the past. He'd spent the rest of the night huddled into a blanket in a fearful ball of misery, and finally Firesong had thrown his hands up and lost patience with him after failing to calm him. Firesong had gone off to the garden to sleep, leaving An'desha to watch out the last of the night by himself.
I knew that he was right, that it had only been a nightmare, but what could such nightmares lead tot What if I fell into one and never came out again? That was what held me so terrified that he could not comfort me. I don't know how many more nights like that I can go through.
Karal nodded solemnly. "He said he would try to come this afternoon, unless I came to tell him otherwise. Shall I go see if he is free?"
"Please!" An'desha replied, with more force than he had intended. He made himself relax, though Karal gave no sign that he was alarmed by the violent response. "Please. Things are—I would truly like to speak with him."
"He'll come. I'll go find him now." Karal knew An'desha well enough by now to take him seriously. He got up and trotted off without another word, leaving An'desha alone in the garden again. Although An'desha was not normally given to pacing, he did so now. After all this time—someone who understood his pain and his peril, who was willing to help him—
What would this Ulrich be like? Let him not be like the shaman of my Clan... that would leave matters worse than they are now! He could not bear that—to have someone deliver a lecture to him on his own moral weakness, on how he should be showing some spine instead of cowering like a child afraid of monsters in the tent shadows. He was doing his best, he was! Even if Firesong didn't think so—
Now that the moment was at hand, he was rapidly tangling into a knot of tension.
"Here we are. I found him on the very path," said Karal cheerfully, from the door. An'desha spun about to see his friend entering through the doorway, with a much older man beside him, a man who walked carefully and a little stiffly.
As they neared, An'desha noted the calm expression on the older man's face—a face, thin and intelligent, with a sharp and prominent nose and matching chin. He and Karal were very much of a "type," as Shin'a'in, Kaled'a'in and Tayledras were of a "type." Interesting, since Valdemarans were as mixed in "type" as a litter of mongrel puppies.
The priest had probably seen some fifty summers or so; his silver hair had a few black threads in it, but not many. But more important to An'desha than his years was his expression; there was none of the querulous impatience An'desha remembered the shaman wearing more often than not.
"An'desha." The man bowed a little in greeting to An'desha, rather than extending his hand to be clasped as Valdemarans did. "Karal has told me something of you and your plight, but I would like to hear it all from your lips, as well." He smiled a little, and his eyes wrinkled at the corners. "Sometimes things can be garbled in the translation, as any diplomat will tell you."
The smile was enough to convince An'desha that, whatever Ulrich was, he was nothing like the shaman. The shaman had never smiled.
Ulrich listened to his history and his current fears with no sign of impatience, and even took him back over a few points to clarify them. As Ulrich questioned him, An'desha was reminded more and more of the spirit-sword Need, the blade that was now carried by Nyara. Need had coached him through his ordeal as he acted against Mornelithe Falconsbane from—literally—within. She had never promised more than a chance at his freedom—she had never given him pity or sympathy, only guidance.
Ulrich was of a similar mind. He did not want to hear excuses, and would not accept them if An'desha tried to make them—but as long as An'desha had clearly been doing his best, Ulrich would praise him for it, and make allowances for things that could not yet be helped.
He did spend quite a bit of time asking many questions about An'desha's experiences with the Avatars, after An'desha mentioned them. He had done so with extreme caution, remembering how shocked Karal had been at the intimation that there were more real deities in the world than his own. But to An'desha's relief and mild amusement, Ulrich was not only not shocked, he seemed to accept it as a matter of course.
"You do believe me, don't you?" he asked, when Ulrich fell silent. "I mean, you believe me about Dawnfire and Tre'valen, that they are Her Avatars, and not something I hallucinated, or something else."
Ulrich took a moment to think before replying. "I admit that such an explanation had occurred to me, when you first mentioned them," he said at last, steepling his fingers together. "You hardly qualified as sane under normal definitions. But after all you have told me, I am quite certain that they are exactly what you claim. And that your 'Star-Eyed' is what you claim Her to be."
Karal made a small sound, something like a strangled cough; An'desha glanced aside and saw him turning a fascinating color.
Ulrich chuckled and turned to his protege. "What, surprised to hear me say that, young one?" he chided gently. "Did you think me so bound by the letter of the Writ? Here is another lesson for you. Most wise priests are well aware that the Light can take many forms, many names, and all are valid. It is there in the earliest copies of the Writ, for those who care to look."
He turned back to An'desha. "It is a man's deeds that define him," he said earnestly. "As I believe Karal has told you—Vkandis Himself has passed that stricture to us, that a good deed done in the name of the Dark is still done for the Light, but an evil one done in the name of the Light is still quite evil, and a soul could be condemned to Darkness for it."
An'desha nodded, as much relieved by those words as by anything else Ulrich could have said or done. The tradition-bound shaman of An'desha's Clan would never have said anything like that.
"I have always felt," Ulrich continued thoughtfully, "that before I passed judgment on any man because of the god he swore by, I would see how he comported himself with his fellows—what he did, and how he treated them. If he acted with honor and compassion, the Name he called upon was irrelevant."
All very well, An'desha thought, after a moment of silence, And I am glad he feels this way—but what about me?—What about the dreams, and—
"However, that has nothing to do with your predicament, An'desha," Ulrich said, startling him. Could Ulrich read his mind? "You have some very real fears that need to be addressed. Let me start with the one closest to your heart—the fear that you are still possessed by that evil creature that called himself Bane-of-Falcons."
An'desha leaned forward eagerly, misgivings forgotten. Point by point, with careful detail, Ulrich proved to him that he knew what he was talking about—and that, as Firesong and everyone else had said, Falconsbane was gone.
What convinced him was that Ulrich had a reason—a sound, believable reason, for some of the things he'd been experiencing. "There really is a simple explanation. You are only now able to feel the physical effects of your emotions, after so many years existing only as a disembodied spirit, so to speak," Ulrich told him patiently. "For you, such things are as fresh and startling as regained sight for one who was blinded, or hearing restored to the deaf! Think of how such a former deaf man would react to a sudden noise—and then think how you are reacting to a sudden surge of emotion. Not only that, you are feeling the sweat of your palms, flushing of the skin or paleness that come with emotions, for the first time in a very long time. They must feel overwhelming to you, easy to interpret as signs of possession. Yet you now feel them with your own body, and not one taken over by an evil spirit."
An'desha nodded, very slowly. This made such good sense, he hardly knew what to think.
"I'm not—I cannot seem to deal with all this," he began hesitantly.
Ulrich smiled. "If you were handling all this well, then I would suspect another possessing spirit, for no sane human could be taking your situation well at this moment!"
Weakly, An'desha returned his smile. "I suppose you are right, when you put it that way—"
"An'desha, not every soul is suited to being a Priest, or a conquering hero, or a serene Healer. You blame yourself for being a coward, when in fact you show more bravery than anyone should expect of you. Judge yourself, not what others would think of you, and be content with what you can do. This does not excuse you from learning how to control your emotions," Ulrich warned. "The shadow of your demon still lurks there. His taint is that it is much, much easier for you to feel anger than joy, hatred than compassion. These are old, worn paths through your body, which will react according to long habit—and old, worn paths through your mind, which experienced what Falconsbane experienced. It is always easier to take the well-worn path than the new one. You must overcome that taint. The scars upon your soul can be smoothed away, but it will take not only time, but your own will, that you will prove to be nothing like him."
That, too, made sense, and An'desha nodded, more comforted now than he could express. Granted, others—including Firesong—had said exactly the same things to him, though in different words, and with no explanations; but this time he felt he could believe them, since they came from an impartial source.
Perhaps Ulrich was a kind of Mind-Healer—or perhaps, a Spirit-Healer, if there was such a thing.
And who am I to say that there is not? Karal said so. I think that I must believe him.
"But this other—this great fear you have that there is danger for all of us that we cannot foresee—this troubles me," Ulrich continued. "This may be something you are sensitive to because of those ancient memories you carry—that would be my guess, at least." He chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully. "If you would like it put another way, part of you, the part of you that holds those ancient memories, knows what they contain, and knows that there is something going on at this moment that relates to those memories, or even matches them. But most of you does not want to face those terrible memories. So, that part of you that is aware and knowledgeable is trying to force the rest of you to become aware and knowledgeable." He cocked an eyebrow at An'desha. "Am I making sense to you, or is all this gibberish?"
"It is making sense," he replied dazedly. In fact, like the other explanation, it was making a little too much sense. He'd had a sense of being divided internally for some time now, but he had thought it was a sign of Falconsbane's continued presence. Now he had another explanation for the feeling, and it was one that did not cater to his fears and left him no excuse for inaction—
Which makes it more likely to be the right one.
"It is what the shaman called 'The Warrior Within.' The voice inside us that tells us what we must know," An'desha said slowly. "The source of all honor, faith, and prosperity under the Goddess is that voice, if we listen with wisdom, they say."
Ulrich studied his face as he sat there with all those powerful thoughts passing through his mind; at last the priest nodded, as if he was satisfied with what he read there. He raised an eyebrow at Karal.
"I have laid the foundation," he said to his protege. "I think you can complete the work. Simply keep your mind as open as it has become, and I do not think you will misstep."
He turned back to An'desha. "The bulk of your solutions lie within you, I do think," Ulrich told him. "Karal will help you, but on the whole, you will be doing the real work to find them. I will do what I can, but there is nothing that I see in you now that requires my further help."
Which meant—what? That he had needed Ulrich's help until this moment?
"I would be the last person to assert that things cannot change, however," Ulrich continued. "If they do, I would be distressed if you did not come to me. Meanwhile, you may trust Karal. He is sensible, he has learned good judgment, he is not afraid of the strange or the powerful, and he has, most of all, a good heart."
Then, while Karal was still blushing a brilliant sunset-crimson, Ulrich got up and left the two of them alone again.
With Ulrich's encouragement, Karal spent as much of his free time as possible with An'desha. As the days passed, Karal became more and more convinced that Ulrich was right; the key to everything An'desha feared lay in those buried memories. Not only was there something in those recollections that was triggering An'desha's prescient episodes and his nightmares, but there were also things about An'desha himself that needed to be dealt with.
So Karal continued to work on the "foundation" that Ulrich had established; building An'desha's confidence, convincing him that he had passions and would make purely human mistakes, but that as long as he remembered to keep his powers under a tight rein, the mistakes he made would teach him how not to make other mistakes.
"Compassion and honor," he said, over and over again. "Those are what is important. So long as you have both, and act with both, you cannot make any mistake that will bring lasting harm."
"No?" An'desha replied with skepticism—a healthy sign, that he should respond with anything other than blind agreement. That meant he was thinking for himself. "But—"
"But good intentions count for something, else I'd have been condemned to Vkandis' coldest Hell long ago!" He grinned and hugged An'desha's shoulders. "If you have compassion and honor, and you made a mistake that harmed someone, must you not, out of compassion and honor, see that the mistake is being made and try to stop it?"
"Well, yes, I suppose," An'desha replied slowly.
"And having seen the effects of such a mistake, must you not also try to reverse them?" he continued, with purest logic. "Don't you see? Compassion and honor require that you not make excuses, nor allow yourself to say, 'nothing can be done.' So even if you make a mistake, you must fix it. You'll want to."
Perhaps because Karal had no great powers of his own, and yet was (relatively) fearless in the face of great powers, An'desha came to trust him, even as Ulrich claimed he would. And although An'desha was not told, Ulrich's interest went far beyond the one meeting. The priest questioned his protege carefully every night, and asked Karal what his continuing plans were. He very seldom suggested any other course—Karal had the feeling that Ulrich was letting him make his own mistakes and rectify them as well—but it gave Karal a feeling of increased confidence to know that his mentor was keeping track of all this, though the progress came by infinitesimal increments.
But there was some measurable progress. An'desha did start looking at some of the older memories. He was already past the life of a strange creature that had called himself simply "Leareth" (which meant "Darkness" in the Hawkbrother tongue), a time that seemed to be several centuries ago.
And Firesong was a great deal happier with him, at least according to An'desha. An'desha carried some of his confidence back into his lessons with the Adept, and was making more and steadier progress toward using those powers he carried, instead of wishing them gone.
Success gave An'desha further courage to look farther and deeper into those dark memories, and to face what lay there.
And, just as important, An'desha was able to look at the terrible things in those memories and acknowledge, without flinching, that the hateful or jealous things he felt (and did not act on) could be considered a faint, far shadow of the dreadful things that the one who had been Falconsbane had done.
And Ulrich pointed out something that Karal had wondered about. The farther back those memories went, the more human, rather than less, that entity became. And the more "reasons" and excuses he made up to justify the unjustifiable.
Ulrich made no conclusions in Karal's hearing about the pattern, but it certainly left him wondering what it meant, and trying to come to a few conclusions of his own. He continued to read those ancient notebooks that Ulrich had given him, and found more than one place in the text that sounded familiar. Then he realized that Ulrich had been quoting extensively from these very texts when he had given An'desha that little speech about doing deeds in the name of the Light.
He was reading in his room, puzzling through another Valdemaran history that Alberich had recommended, when Ulrich cleared his throat from just outside his open door. He looked up, quickly, and sat straight up on his bed. His master wore an unusually serious expression, and his robes were not only immaculate, he was wearing one of his formal outfits, robes of heavy ebony silk that shone with full magnificence.
"I dislike ordering you out of your own room, Karal," his mentor said apologetically, "But I have only just arranged a meeting with someone very important, who wishes to discuss matters of a sensitive and theoretical nature. And if—"
"If I'm here, your important person won't talk, because I might overhear something. Yes, sir." Karal put a marker in his book and quickly got to his feet. "Since these discussions are theoretical, you won't need a record of them. I'm certain I can find something to occupy my time between now and—say—dinner? I'm already dressed for it, so I won't need to return."
"Excellent, and thank you." Ulrich stood aside to let him leave, with no further comment. Karal had been expecting something like this for the past few days—negotiations between his mentor and not only the Valdemaran government, but the Rethwellan government as well, had gotten to the point where some significant gains could be made. That meant private, one-to-one meetings, where both parties could discuss possibilities in total confidence and privacy.
As he walked down the wood-paneled hallway with a friendly nod to the guard patrolling there, he realized that he was, for once, completely at loose ends. An'desha would be with Firesong, in his magic-practices. There was no use going into the garden to be snubbed by the young nobles there—and it was snubbing, now; they had learned he was no noble, and saw no reason to treat him better than any other servant. The library, ordinarily enticing, was usually as full of young Heralds at this time of the afternoon as the gardens were full of young courtiers. They weren't snubbing him, but he wasn't in the mood for fending off questions and curious glances, either.
I'd ride, but I'm not exactly dressed for it, he thought wryly. Dressing for dinner early might not have been such a good idea. A pity; another workout wouldn't have hurt Trenor in the least. One simply did not go in to dinner with the Court smelling of horse, however.
That did give him an idea, though. He'd been passing through Companion's Field on a daily basis without gawking at the inhabitants, but he could spend whole marks watching real horses, so why not spend some time watching these not-horses? It might give him some insight into what they were.
With that in mind, he took himself down to the first door to the outside, and headed for the path that would take him to the Field.
While there were plenty of people about, none of them paid any attention to him. He leaned up against the fence and simply watched the graceful creatures, taking a completely aesthetic pleasure in the way they moved rather than consciously analyzing what they were doing. Within a very little time, though, he was aware that they did not act like horses at all. There was no sense of a "herd" at all; the closest to "herds" were small groups of foals playing together, with the mares standing or grazing nearby, very much like mothers keeping a careful eye on their toddlers while gossiping. There was no dominance-shoving or scuffling among the young stallions as there would have been in any other situation where there were mares present; rather, the young stallions were as calm as the mares, and the only way of telling one from the other was by the physical attributes. There was one stallion that every Companion there deferred to, but there was nothing of the submission to the dominant herd beast; they acted more like loyal courtiers with a genial and approachable monarch. It was rather fascinating, actually. Any person with a bit of knowledge of real horses would be well aware that this was not "normal" behavior. In fact; he had a disconcerting impression of a large group of people taking their ease in a park....
"There have been times when I would have been pleased to have traded places with any of them," said a familiar voice behind him.
"I can certainly see why, Herald Rubrik," Karal replied, turning to greet their former guide with a smile. "Perhaps one day you will also be able to explain to me how a creature as large as your Companion can succeed in creeping up behind someone, while making no noise whatsoever!"
Rubrik shrugged, gazing down on Karal from his vantage point in his Companion's saddle. "I have no idea, but the gryphons are just as good at it. I've had the male come up behind me unexpectedly and scare the wits out of me; he didn't intend anything of the sort, and he was very apologetic about it, but I can't imagine how he managed to do it in the first place." The Herald eyed Karal speculatively. "Think you could spare a few moments to help me down?"
"Surely. Here, or at the barn?" he replied readily.
"The barn, if you would be so kind." Rubrik chuckled. "You aren't dressed for grooming, so I won't ask you to help me, but I'd appreciate some company while I take care of things."
"Actually, so would I," Karal admitted, as the Companion started off toward the gate at a sedate walk, and he took up a position at Rubrik's stirrup. "I found myself at loose ends, and I was just thinking how few people I really know here. Most of the ones I know by name, I do not know well enough to speak casually to."
"Ah." Rubrik nodded sagely. "I can see that. In part, I would suspect that is the burden of being a diplomat, if only by association. Whatever anyone says to you is likely to be scrutinized from every possible angle. And—I understand as a 'commoner' forced to operate socially with highly born folk with an exaggerated sense of the importance of bloodlines, things are not as pleasant for you as they could be. Your master is protected and given status by his rank as ambassador, but you are no more than a lowly secretary, completely beneath their notice. It is rather difficult to have an enlightening conversation under those circumstances."
Karal sighed, and fidgeted with his Vkandis-medal. "I could wish that was less accurate, sir."
"At least your Valdemaran has improved significantly," Rubrik observed as they reached the barn and crossed the threshold into the cool and shadowed interior.
Karal managed a smile. "If it had not, your own Herald Alberich would be having some irritated words with me. As I'm sure you are aware, his irritation is not an easy thing to bear!" He helped Rubrik from the saddle, then assisted with removing the tack and handing Rubrik grooming brushes while they talked.
Rubrik succeeded in drawing him out, as he had so many times in the past. It wasn't hard; Karal desperately wanted someone to talk to, and he realized before too long how much he had missed the older man's insights and quiet observations.
"I suppose I'm lonely," he said finally, with a sigh, as he leaned against the wall of a stall and watched Rubrik comb out his Companion's mane. "I was so much of a loner at home that I wasn't expecting to be lonely here, but it's harder than I thought, being so much a foreigner here. It's partly because in Karse, one of the Kin would feel at home in any holy place, and they were everywhere. But here, there is only one strange place after another."
"I think I might have a solution for you, rather than a handful of platitudes, for a change," Rubrik replied; a completely unexpected response. Karal stared at him as he patted his Companion and sent him on his way out the door, then turned back to him with a smile that hinted of plans behind Rubrik's eyes. "What if I found you someone about your own age to talk to? The Court is far from being all there is to this place, and even Herald's Collegium is not the center of the universe—though we'd like to think it is!"
Karal wasn't sure how to respond, so he just smiled weakly at this sally. Rubrik didn't take any offense at this lack of enthusiasm.
"There are quite a few young people your age here—far more than either the Heraldic students or those conceited young nobles," he continued. "Would you care to meet people who are more concerned about your skills than your birth?"
"It sounds good, but I don't know, sir," Karal said carefully. "As you pointed out, I am a foreigner here and associated with the diplomatic mission. They might not care for me."
But Rubrik was not to be dissuaded, and put forth a number of convincing arguments. It sounded too good to be true, actually, and entirely too idealistic, but finally Karal allowed himself to be swayed by Rubrik's enthusiasm and agreed, keeping his reservations to himself.
Rubrik still had tack to clean, and was quite prepared to talk more, but time got away from them. As the warning bell rang to signal that dinner was imminent, he walked back to the Palace alone, wondering who this mysterious group of people was. He certainly hadn't seen any sign of them in all the time he'd been here. And why would they be any different from—say—the Heraldic trainees?
Oh, well, he decided, as he entered the Palace itself with a nod to the guards at the door, and sought the Great Hall, joining the thin but steady stream of courtiers heading that way from the gardens. It is certainly worth a try. I have more time on my hands now than I expected to, and much less to fill it.
Dinner was the usual controlled chaos of conversation and Karal was at his usual place at Ulrich's right hand; and as usual, Karal understood less than half of what was said around him. On the other hand, he didn't expect to need to understand what was said; he was watching what was done. The subtle languages of movement, expression, and eyes told him more than speech did, anyway. He paid very careful attention to Ulrich's dinner companion, the Lord Patriarch, since his mentor seemed to be having a particularly intense discussion with that worthy gentleman. It seemed to be an extension of an earlier conversation but was couched in very vague terms; Karal couldn't figure out exactly what they were talking about. He wondered if the Lord Patriarch was the person Ulrich had been meeting with this afternoon. There were offshoot Temples of Vkandis here in Valdemar, Temples whose members had defected from the Mother Temple when war broke out with Karse, holding their allegiance to Valdemar—or the older Writ—higher than their allegiance to the Son of the Sun in Karse. Given all that Karal had learned about those times, it could be they had placed their allegiance correctly! But could Solaris be planning on bringing these strayed sheep back into the fold? That would certainly cause a great deal of upheaval in the offshoot Temples at least, and make for more diplomatic incidents at the worst.
He wasn't too surprised when after dinner he found himself alone again, excluded from the suite by more "confidential conversations." But this time the library was empty, so that was where he went.
And that was where Rubrik found him.
There was someone else with him; a young woman dressed in a uniform very like that of the young Herald students, but colored a light blue rather than gray. She was thin and earnest, with a nose that was a match for Karal's, deep-set brown eyes, and short, straight brown hair—scandalously short, by Karsite standards. She was not exactly pretty, but her face was full of character and hinted at good humor.
"I thought I'd find you here," Rubrik said cheerfully, as he limped up to the desk where Karal was leafing through an illustrated book of Valdemaran birds. "This is the person I wanted you to meet. Natoli, this is Karal; Karal, my daughter Natoli."
Daughter? Oh, no—is this some kind of matchmaking ploy?
His eyes widened involuntarily at the thought, and he frantically tried to marshal some kind of excuse to get away, but Rubrik's next words collapsed that notion.
"She's one of what the Heraldic trainees call 'the Blues,' for their uniforms," Rubrik continued. "What that means is that they share classes with the trainees without being Heraldic, Healer, or Bardic trainees themselves. Some of these students are the children of nobles, but many are lowborn or of the merchant classes, young people with high intelligence who distinguished themselves enough to find patronage into the ranks of the Blues. Most of Natoli's friends are mathematicians and crafters, like Natoli herself."
The girl nodded briskly, with no attempt at flirtation, which relieved Karal immensely.
"I've asked her to give you a tour of the Palace and Collegia as a Blue would see it, then introduce you to some of her friends." Rubrik grinned. "You might be surprised. Some of them actually speak rudimentary Karsite."
Before Karal could stammer his thanks, Rubrik limped off, still chuckling to himself. His daughter examined Karal for a moment, with her arms crossed over her chest and her feet braced slightly apart.
Evidently she approved of what she saw. "Actually, Father doesn't really understand what I want to do," she said, with no attempt at making small talk. "I'm going to construct devices, engines, we call them, to do the work that several men or horses are needed for now."
"What, like wind and water mills?" Karal hazarded, and she grinned with delight.
"Exactly!" she replied. "And I want to build special bridges too, that would allow for the passage of masted ships and—well, that doesn't matter right at the moment. There's still some sunlight, would you like to take that tour now?"
She seemed friendly enough, even if she wasn't like any female Karal had ever encountered before. It occurred to him that he was meeting a great many women here in Valdemar who weren't like the females he knew at home. He nodded, and she motioned to him to get up and follow her. "You're in the Palace library, I'll show you the others, and the classrooms for the three Collegia first," she said—and proceeded to do just that, with a brisk efficiency that had his head spinning.
She pointed out things to him that he would never have had any interest in on his own—details of architecture and the mechanics that created the many comforts in the Palace itself. How the chimneys were structured so that the fireplaces in each room drew evenly for instance, or the arrangement of rainwater gutters and cisterns on the roof that put water in every bathing room. It was quite clear that she loved her avocation, and equally clear that flirtation was the farthest thing from her mind.
The sun set just as she completed her tour, and she marked the crimson glory with a nod of satisfaction. "The Compass Rose should be just about filling now," she said, a non sequitur that caused him to knit his brows in puzzlement.
"Compass Rose?" he repeated.
"Oh, that's the place where all my friends and their teachers meet, just about every night," she replied airily. "Father told me to introduce you around, so I figured that I'd take you there tonight and get all the introductions over at once."
"Tavern?" he echoed. "Uh—tonight? You mean, right now?" I'm not sure I'm up to a strange tavern in a strange city full of strange people....
"Of course," she said, and set off down the path that led to the small gate in the wall he had first entered when he and Ulrich arrived here, without waiting to see if he was going to follow her. "That's much more logical than trying to track them down tomorrow, one at a time. And much more efficient as well."
He had the feeling, as he trailed in her wake, that "logical and efficient" played a very large part in how she regarded the world. He could only wonder what some of his teachers back at the Temple would have made of her.
The gate guards let them out without a comment, and they made their way through the lamplit streets. Natoli threaded her way through the traffic with the confidence of someone who passed this way so often she could have done so blindfolded. The tavern lay just beyond the ring of homes of the highly born or wealthy, but Natoli knew shortcuts that Rubrik apparently hadn't, little paths that led between garden walls and across alleys he would never have guessed were there. By the time the last sunset light had left the sky, they were already at the door of the Compass Rose itself.
Karal knew what to look for in a good tavern, and he was pleased to find all of it in this one—clean floors and tables, enough servers to take care of the customers without rushing, decent lighting, and no odors of spoiled food or spilled drink. In fact, in the matter of lighting, the Compass Rose was as well-equipped as the Temple scriptorium, which rather surprised him.
Most of the tables were full, or nearly, but Natoli knew exactly where she was going. "Come on," she told him, as she peered across the room with her hand shading her eyes. "It looks as if everyone's here."
She started out across the crowded room, expertly dodging chairs and servers as she moved. "We form up in groups according to what we're interested in, and each group has its own tables," she explained over her shoulder, as he struggled through the crowd to keep up with her. "The teachers are all in the back room, of course—you know they've graduated you when they send you an invitation to join them. That's when you stop taking classes and start looking for work or a patron, or start teaching, yourself."
"Oh," he replied, which was really all he could say, for by that time she'd reached the table she wanted—a long affair surrounded by two dozen chairs at least, all but three of them filled with blue-garbed young men and a few young women, and covered not only with tankards and mugs, and platters of food, but with books and papers, water-stained and dotted with mug rings. Now the reason for the good lighting in here came to him. It looked as if these people were as accustomed to doing some of their work and reading here as in libraries or other quiet places! No few of the people who greeted Natoli were just as foreign-looking as Karal himself, though he was the only one wearing anything other than that ubiquitous blue uniform. They greeted her with varying degrees of enthusiasm, from boisterousness to carefully contained cheer.
"This is Karal," his guide said, when they'd finished. "He's with the Karsite ambassador. Secretary."
"Really?" One of the nearest, a young man with sharp, fox-like features and a wild shock of carrot-colored hair, raised his eyebrows in surprise. Then he grinned, and said in careful Karsite, "I would be grateful, good sir, if you could tell me the direction of the Temple."
"South, about four hundred meiline from here," Karal replied shortly in his own tongue, then continued in Valdemaran. "Your accent is really quite good, but you need to form your gutturals farther back in your throat, and they're like hoarse breathing, not like gargling."
"Ah! Alberich never could explain that properly, thank you!" the young man said, and he hooked the nearest empty chair with his foot, dragging it over. "Have a seat, won't you? Natoli, we need your help on the drawbridge project."
Karal took the proffered chair as Natoli helped herself to another, and was immediately engulfed in a technical discussion of which Karal understood perhaps half. The center of attention for the group was a huge piece of paper, covered with scribbles surrounding a drawing of a bridge, that they had placed in the middle of the table so that everyone could look at it at the same time. Someone got him a tankard of light ale, and someone else shoved a plateful of cheese-topped bread rounds at him, and everyone else at the table acted as if he belonged there, so he simply sat and listened while they thrashed out whatever the problem was. When the topic turned to other subjects—the problem of the drawbridge having been satisfactorily dealt with—on the occasions when he could contribute a word or two, he did.
To his pleasure, these people ignored what he looked like and where he came from in favor of what he thought and said. Granted, at the moment, that wasn't much—he was much more comfortable with simply listening to the others—but the few things he did say were treated with no more and no less respect than what anyone else said.
He drank his ale and kept his ears and his mind open, covering a great deal of astonishment by hiding his expression in his tankard. He had never before seen anyone with the kind of unbounded curiosity these young men and women shared. They talked and acted as if there was nothing that was impossible, from flying like birds to moving beneath the surface of the water without needing to breathe, like a fish. And they behaved as if there was nothing, no subject, that was "not meant for man to know."
He knew what most of his teachers would have said by now. At one point or another, every single one of the people sitting at this table uttered something that could be taken as blasphemous, and at least before Solaris' day, blasphemers met with the Fires.
By the time Natoli declared that they both needed to get some sleep and led him back out into the cold darkness, his head was swimming with so many conflicting ideas and emotions that it felt as if a hive of swarming bees had come to rest inside it. Excitement warred with nervous fear, and he was glad that the darkness hid his expression from Natoli as she led him back to the Palace. Her own excited monologue about some mathematical progression or other required only that he make vague noises in response from time to time and covered the fact that he couldn't have answered even if he'd known what it was she was talking about.
The guard at the gate knew her very well, it seemed, and shook his head when the two of them approached. "I don't know what I'm going to tell your father, young woman," he said, as soon as they came within earshot. "Out until near midnight, and with a young man!"
"Who is someone Father told me to introduce around, so you can curb your lurid thoughts," she replied smartly. "As for coming in late—if he doesn't ask, you don't have to tell him, do you?"
The guard continued to shake his head, but he opened the gate for them and locked it behind them without another word.
She left him on the path to the Palace, parting from him with a cheerful wave and a promise to meet him tomorrow. "I live in the dormitory with the Bardic students," she told him. "Most of the people you met tonight actually live in town, rather than on the Palace grounds, but since Father's a Herald, they let me live here. Will you be free right after lunch tomorrow?"
"Uh—yes," he said, responding before he could think.
"Good, then I'll meet you in the Palace library." And without giving him a chance to say anything else, she trotted off into the darkness.
He made his way back to the Palace in something of a dazed condition. The guards he encountered must have recognized him, since only two of them stopped him to ask who he was and where he was going. He managed to find his way back to the suite with a minimum of stumbling around in the dark, as most of the halls were lit by a minimum of lamps at this time of night.
He waved a silent greeting at the corridor guard, who grinned as if he had his own ideas about where Karal had been. The door was unlocked, and he pushed it open slowly, hoping that it wouldn't creak. The suite of rooms was dark but for a single candle burning in the night-lamp, and he made his way to his own room, stepping carefully to keep from waking Ulrich up.
He felt a certain amount of guilt at not leaving a note for his mentor. I only hope Rubrik told him that Natoli carried me off... even if Rubrik didn't know where we were going. He had the feeling that there was going to be a lot of explaining to be done in the morning.
At least he was used to staying up this late. When Ulrich didn't need his services, he generally read until just about midnight anyway. He didn't seem to need as much sleep as some people did, which was very useful, given the number of times Ulrich had needed multiple copies of documents at short notice.
He pushed open the door of his own room and closed it carefully behind him, heaving a sigh of relief as it shut with a minimum of sound. Only then did he turn around—
And froze.
There was someone waiting for him on his bed, a long, pale form that lay curled up against the pillows. It wasn't Ulrich, unless Ulrich had suddenly acquired a pair of green-gold eyes that glowed in the dark.
He gasped, and the lamp in the bracket beside the door lit itself with a little puff of sound.
As the lamplight steadied, a slender, cream-colored body uncurled itself gracefully from the place where it had been lying, near the head of the bed, cushioned by the pillows. The green-gold disks became the widened pupils of a pair of intensely blue eyes, surrounded by a brick-red mask. The otherwise pale-cream face was topped by a pair of brick-red ears, both of which were swiveled to face him. A red tail switched restlessly, curling up and curling down again, rather than thudding against the bed as a dog's would have.
:Well, you certainly have been enjoying a night on the roof,: the Firecat said in his mind. Its tone was amused, genial, and quite friendly.
It's a Firecat. A Firecat—in my room, on my bed, talking to me.
"I—uh—" He stared at the Cat with his mouth dropping open, unable to make his mind or his body work properly. What was a Firecat doing here? And why was it in his room?
:Close your mouth, child, you look like a stranded fish,: the Cat said, and purred with high good humor. :I'm not here to drag you off to some kind of punishment. I've simply been sent here to give you some advice from time to time—advice your mentor wouldn't be able to grant you. That was what you wanted, wasn't it? Someone you could trust to advise you!:
He was irresistibly reminded at that moment of an ancient proverb. "Be careful what you wish for—"
:Indeed. "—you might get it." Quite true, which is why it's a proverb, but in the current situation it's not entirely apt. I'd have come here even if you hadn't wished for an advisor you could trust. This is an unstable situation, and you are in the middle of it. You are central to a number of complicated problems, the confidant to several key persons, and we simply couldn't have you walking about and chancing blunders without a little guidance.:
"Oh," he said, weakly, and could not help wondering if he had already blundered somewhere?
:Oh, Bright Flame, no! You've been doing just fine so far. And I'm not here to steer you into some kind of predestined future. Just at the moment, no one knows what may be coming, how this situation will resolve itself. No, not even the Sunlord Himself. The advice I am to give you will simply be based on a little more information than you have access to. If we are all very lucky, we will all work to bring this to a good conclusion.:
The Cat tilted its head to the side, waiting for his response.
"If that's supposed to be comforting," he replied with more bravado than he felt, "it isn't."
:Good. I'm not here to comfort you. I hope you're nervous; given what I know, you should be. Now, just shed those clothes and get into bed, you'll need the sleep.: The Cat moved down to the foot of the bed and sat there, watching him, its bright blue eyes fixed on him in a way that suggested if he didn't hurry up and do what he'd been told, the Cat would—help.
Probably by shredding the clothes right off my body.
He quickly stripped off his clothing, and slipped into bed. The Cat arranged itself comfortably near his feet, without weighing him down, and gave its paws a quick wash. :By the way,: it said, as he put his head warily down on the pillow. :That Herald with the limp did come by and tell Ulrich that his daughter had kidnapped you, and not to wait up. And my name is Altra.:
Altra? But wasn't that the name of the Son of the Sun who—
He didn't even get a chance to finish the thought, for he fell asleep instantly.
Birdsong coming down his chimney woke him—which meant it must be a fair day, rather than a stormy one. Perhaps the Heralds had finally gotten their weather-magic working.
He stretched and yawned, without opening his eyes. Odd. I dreamed that a Firecat was here last night. What a strange—
He opened his eyes as his foot encountered a heavy weight at the foot of his bed. The Firecat raised his head and blinked at him.
:Good morning. As you see, I'm not a dream.: Altra yawned, showing a formidable set of teeth. :You do have a very comfortable bed, and I am pleased to report that you neither toss nor snore.:
"Uh, thank you." He racked his brain for something to say. What do you say to an Avatar of your God? "Hello, heard any good Sunlord jokes recently?" "Good morning, how may I worship you?" "Can I get you anything for breakfast? Uh—fish? Milk?"
:Nothing, thank you,: Altra replied loftily. :Firecats are above such mundane considerations as eating.:
Well that was something of a relief. If the Cat didn't eat, it didn't probably didn't eliminate either, which meant he wasn't going to have to find a box of sand somewhere—or would a Cat be able to use facilities made for humans?
Oh, this was too much to think about—but how was he going to explain the presence of a huge feline in his room, when he hadn't arrived with any such thing? "It followed me back from the tavern"? And how was he going to explain the presence of a Firecat to Ulrich, who knew what they were?
:Don't be surprised if you don't see me very often,: Altra continued, getting up and giving a full, nose-to-tail stretch. His claws were as formidable as his teeth. :I have other business to worry about. Your master is as much in need of that bit of advice now and again as you are. I'll just drop in discreetly whenever you require the extra information I'm privy to—and if you think you really want it, I'll also give you—ah—"fatherly" advice, in the absence of your real father, if you feel too embarrassed to ask Ulrich.: Altra actually winked slyly. Meanwhile, I shall be—invisible.:
The door to his room opened of itself. The Firecat stretched again and jumped down off Karal's bed. There was a patch of bright sunlight just beyond the now-open door—Altra strolled casually out the door and into the sunlight.
And vanished.
Karal collapsed back against the pillows, not sure whether he should be elated or frightened out of his wits. He settled for a mixture of the two, with a healthy dose of panic.
Oh, Bright Flames, the last thing I need is the personal attentions of the Sunlord in my life! And a Firecat! The Cats get into everything and anything—what if Vkandis finds out about all the strange things I've been learning here! What if He finds out about what goes on at the Compass Rose?
Wait a moment. Vkandis was a god, all-knowing, all-powerful. How could He not know what Karal had been getting into?
Altra said I was doing the right things—so—
A visitation from an avatar, warning that the situation was unstable and about to become perilous, a hundred strange and possibly blasphemous things to think about that he'd heard last night—
—a powerful mage who was frightened of his own memories, unsure of himself—and called him "friend"—
—and a young woman, bright, intelligent, and competent, and disturbingly attractive—
—my head hurts.
All this before breakfast.
If I go back to sleep, will all this go away? No, probably not. He might as well get up and deal with it, then. It certainly wasn't going to get any better. I just hope, he thought glumly, as he climbed out of his bed and started looking for a clean set of clothing, that it doesn't get worse.
Belief, however, is a fragile thing, when coupled with shock. By lunchtime, he had a hard time convincing himself that he had actually seen the Firecat; in the face of all of his everyday work and lessoning, the whole incident seemed more like something brought on by a little too much imagination—and ale—than anything real. Besides, it made no sense! After all, why would a Firecat come to him! How could he possibly be central to anything? Now—Ulrich, or even that Herald Talia, that he could believe, but there was no reason to even dream he'd get the attentions of a Firecat. He was nothing more important than a secretary—a good one, but no more than that. Oh, there was that mysterious business that Ulrich sometimes alluded to, that he was a "channel," which was presumably rare, but nothing ever seemed to come of it, and he doubted that anything would.
After a good, solid lunch of perfectly ordinary food, and when no further manifestations of the Sunlord's regard appeared in his path, he had just about put it all down to an extraordinarily vivid dream just before waking. When he returned to his room to change after his lesson and ride with Alberich, he had second and third thoughts. There were no celestial cat hairs on his bedspread, no glowing paw prints on the wooden floor of his room. There had never been a Firecat; it was all the fault of reading those notebooks. He'd had a vivid dream, then let his imagination take over, that was all.
Comforted by those thoughts, he headed for An'desha's home (his ekele, he reminded himself; An'desha was teaching him Tayledras to go along with his Valdemaran), with nothing more on his mind than gratitude for the lovely, fair day. Too many times of late he'd had to make his way across Companion's Field through drizzle, or worse, a downpour, just to visit his friend. Today, he might even be able to persuade An'desha to take their discussion outside. The young mage spent far too much time cooped up inside.
He was planning just where he would like to go, when he noticed that the Companions were not ignoring his presence the way they usually did. In fact, they were moving in on him from all directions, with a cheerful purposefulness to their steps. Some of them even seemed to be trying to block his path in a nonthreatening way. He stopped right where he was, and they continued to move toward him—but still not with any threat that he could detect. Rather, he got the impression of welcome, as if they had suddenly decided to play the gracious hosts.
This was decidedly strange behavior, even if he knew they weren't horses!
But before he could say anything to them—though he wasn't sure what he would say—or make any move to retreat, they took the initiative away from him.
They surrounded him completely, closing him inside a circle as they stood flank-to-flank. He couldn't possibly get past them unless he pushed through them, and he knew from handling horses that if they didn't want him to pass, he wouldn't be able to move them.
One of the nearest tossed its—his, it was definitely a young stallion—head, and made a sound that closely resembled a human clearing his throat. As Karal turned his attention to that particular Companion, it blinked guileless blue eyes at him.
:Ah—you're Karal, as I understand,: said a voice speaking into his mind, exactly as Altra had. :I hope you'll forgive the informality of introducing myself. I'm Florian.:
The "tone of voice" was as different from the Firecat's as a young man's high and slightly nervous tenor would be from an older man's confident and amused bass. But with no one else anywhere around, it was pretty obvious that the "voice" was coming from the Companion directly in front of him, the one with deep blue eyes it would be incredibly easy to fall into—
Twice in one day? Twice in one day that uncanny creatures decide they're going to speak in my mind!
Why now? And why me?
Karal shook his head to clear it, and wondered if he ought to sit down. He coughed, tried to think of something clever to say, and then settled for the first stupid thing that came into his mind. "Ah—Florian? Are you a Companion?"
:Last time I looked, I was.: The one who must be Florian switched his tail and cocked his head to one side. The other Companions had broken their circle and were moving away now, as if they were satisfied that Karal was not going to run screaming out of the Field.
That was probably only because his knees were so shaky he wasn't certain he could walk, much less run, screaming or otherwise.
"Why—why are you talking to me?" he asked, inanely.
:Well, partly because of Altra,: Florian told him, dashing his half-formed conviction that the Firecat had only been a dream. :He's a stranger here as much as you are, and he doesn't know some of what we know. We're familiar with the entire history of Valdemar, including a lot that isn't in the books. We thought it was time you had someone around who could answer your questions about this place, the Heralds, and all. You never ask the questions that are in your mind; you keep trying to find the answers in books.: Florian snorted. :That's not always possible. People don't always write down important things.:
Well, he had been a little reticent about asking questions. He hadn't wanted to look like a complete idiot....
:You hardly need to worry about looking stupid in front of a horse now, do you?: Florian flipped his tail playfully, and Karal got the impression that he was grinning.
"Well, couldn't An'desha have told me?" he replied, feeling stubborn. He hadn't asked for this—or for Altra, for that matter! "Or—Natoli, she's from Valdemar! And her father's a Herald, too!"
But Florian only stamped his hoof scornfully. :Your friend An'desha is just as much a stranger to this place as you are, and while young Natoli is a very nice young lady, she doesn't know anything at all about politics.:
"And you do?" he responded dubiously.
Florian snorted. :Not me alone. We do. We, the Companions as a whole. Remember, our Heralds are up to their ears in politics, and we share their thoughts. There isn't much at all about us in the books, either, nor Heralds-, the details of our partnerships aren't the kinds of things that get written down. I can tell you all about that, whatever you want to know.:
"All?" He wasn't sure he believed that, either.
:Well, if there's something I can't tell you, at least I won't lie to you, all right! I won't mislead you.: Florian's mood was as mercurial as anyone Karal had ever seen; now it seemed as if he was pleading with Karal. His ears went down a little, and his head sank a bit. :Look, we just wanted to make certain that you knew where you could find someone to help you. Altra may be your guide, but you know cats. They show up when it suits them, and not necessarily when you need them. And they love secrets. He could withhold things from you just to appear mysterious. That happens all the time.:
That did sound just like a cat, and he chuckled weakly in spite of his shock. "Still—I mean, I'm not a Valdemaran, I'm a Karsite. What's more, I'm sworn to Vkandis. Are you really, really sure this shouldn't this be left to Altra?"
Florian snorted. :Altra doesn't know near enough about Heralds and Companions, things that you will need to know—but being a cat, he'll act as if he does, and make up what he doesn't know. Really, Karal, I'm honestly here to help you. If you'll let me, that is.:
Karal hardly knew which way to turn; he could only remember one thing. According to Ulrich, Companions were "just like" Firecats. That made them, in effect, speakers for the Sunlord—
Or Whoever, he reminded himself.
:Well, remember what Ulrich told you,: Florian reminded him. :Does it matter who I speak for? We're both on the same side. Karal, this is important. You need to accept me. Please, trust me in this.:
Wonderful. Now something else wanted him to trust it.
On the other hand—
:You need me,: Florian repeated stubbornly.
He sighed. "All right," he said at last, with resignation. "I'll trust you. But mainly because it's a lot easier coming to you for answers than it is to go look them up—or try to, anyway."
:Good!: Florian tossed his head and pranced in place. :Excellent! I told them you'd see reason! Now—since I happen to know that your friend An'desha is still with Firesong, and I also know you have a head full of questions you haven't asked yet—: The Companion nudged him with his nose in the direction of the barn, :—you can groom me while you're asking those questions. I haven't got a Herald, and no one spends any amount of time grooming Companions who don't have Heralds. I itch.:
"I'm sure you do," Karal sighed. "I'm sure you do."
He headed obediently toward the barn; after all, he might as well do the Companion that little favor in return for getting an easy set of answers to all his questions, starting with, "just what does the Queen's Own do?"
But if anyone had asked him, among Natoli, Altra, and Florian, he was beginning to feel as if he was suffering from a spiritual concussion!
Some people are born to greatness, Grand Duke Tremane thought glumly. Some people stumble into greatness. And some people get all the responsibilities without the acknowledgment.
From the moment he had walked through the Gate into the headquarters of the Hardornen Campaign, he had been forced to improvise. The situation was a complete nightmare, the worst campaign he had ever seen or read about. The only good thing about the disaster was the headquarters itself; the fortified manor of some nobly-born Hardornen his men had taken intact. Not even the paintings on the walls were disturbed, nor more than a handful of jewels and other small objects looted. If he must be in a perilous situation, at least he would endure it in comfort. This was the privilege of command and control.
Normally when the Empire moved in on a country to conquer it, the conclusion was foregone from the moment the troops first crossed the border. The situation within the target nation was always in a state of turmoil; the central government would be in chaos thanks to the internal machinations of Imperial agents, and generally the populace was in revolt as disorganization allowed greedy nobles to take liberties. That made conquest little more than defeating the few troops willing or able to oppose the Empire, and moving in.
Front-line Imperial shock troops always went in first to take a precisely calculated amount of terrain. They would take no more, and no less. At that point, they would stop and hold a line; consolidation troops would follow to mop up whatever weak resistance still remained. Once the commander was certain that the conquered territory was going to stay conquered, holding troops moved in. Their task was one of fortifying strongholds, establishing or repairing roads, mills, and whatever industries existed or needed to be built.
They were followed in turn by administrators and policing troops, whose only task was to maintain order and establish Imperial Law. By this time, the populace was always so dazzled with the superiority of Imperial life that they welcomed the establishment of Imperial Law and government with religious fervor.
And lastly, Imperial priests moved in, to establish worship of the Emperor and all his predecessors alongside the worship of whatever gods the barbarians kept.
With all that done, and a secure base behind him, the frontline troops could leapfrog out again.
This strategy had never failed—until now.
Mages were always part of every phase of the invasion, of course. None of this could be done without them. They were better and more reliable than spies, enabled all commanders to communicate with each other and with their general instantly, and their offensive magics usually terrified the enemy. Without the Portals they built, it would be impossible to maintain troops in the field; with the Portals, fresh soldiers and supplies were available at a moment's notice, and a general was able to return in person to the capital—or any other place, for that matter.
The mages were the keystone that made it all work—which was why every candidate for the Iron Throne must be enough of a mage that other mages would not be able to trick him by under—or over-stating their own abilities. Ideally, he would be First-Rank, but Second would do in a pinch.
Tremane himself was not only a First-Rank, but was a First-Rank Red; the only two degrees above him were Blue and Purple—and the only Rank higher than First was Adept. That was one reason why he considered himself the best choice for the Throne. And it was one reason why, after due reflection, he had decided that the conquest of Hardorn had simply been bungled by a general who did not understand how to utilize his mages properly.
He had discovered the instant he set foot on Hardornen soil that he had been completely wrong.
The conquest of Hardorn had begun with the usual Imperial efficiency. It should have continued that way. There was no reason—on paper—why everything should not have gone according to the plans.
Tremane rested his chin on his hands and glowered down at the map on the table before him. But not at Hardorn—at the land beyond its borders in the west.
Valdemar.
Valdemar was to blame; he knew it in his bones, although he could not prove it. There was only one agent inside Valdemar in a position to observe anything in the Court, and he was not terribly effective. He was not able to get close to anyone in the queen's councils, and as a commoner, he was excluded from anything but the most trivial of gossip. He had reported nothing in the way of aid from the Queen, but Tremane knew better.
The Valdemarans were, must be, offering covert support and organizing the resistance, no matter how much they might pretend otherwise. It was a situation that simply should never have occurred, and what was more, it made no sense. Until the moment of Ancar's death, Valdemar had been locked in war with Hardorn. That state of war should have continued, even with Ancar slain. Valdemar should have been grateful to see someone else trouncing their enemy. They should have been as happy to see the Imperial troops marching into Hardorn as the poor oppressed citizens of Hardorn itself.
It didn't, they weren't, and we're bemired. And I can't even prove it's Valdemar that's behind it all.
As had been reported, the conquest of Hardorn had slowed to a crawl, and it had become much more expensive in terms of men and material than had been projected. The situation was worse than he had expected. The Empire ran by close accounting; sometimes he suspected it was the accountants that actually ruled it. Every unexpected loss meant resources would have to be reshuffled from elsewhere.
He buried his face in his hands for a moment. He was tired, mortally tired. He'd spent every waking hour since he had arrived trying to staunch the hemorrhage this campaign had become, and he had been awake for far too many hours in the day. Now, at least, they were no longer losing men and supplies at the rate they had been, but the situation had turned into a stalemate. They could not go forward, but could not go back, either. They could not even move in the support troops, for the countryside that had been "taken" had not yet been pacified.
I have to make a decision, he realized wearily. I can try to press on, as General Sheda did, or I can make this temporary halt more permanent, consolidate what we have, and try to figure out how to break the deadlock.
He had already made far too many command decisions that he was going to have to justify later. There were spies in the ranks; he knew that, and he also did not know who all of them were. He came into this too late to put enough of his own men inside to be really effective at ferreting out who belonged to whom. Some of the agents in place were spies for his rivals, some for the Emperor, some spied only to sell information to the highest bidder. That was the problem with Imperial politics; if you served in any official capacity, you had to worry as much about enemies from within as enemies of the Empire.
I didn't expect to have to make decisions this risky the moment I took command. His stomach burned, and there was a sour taste in the back of his throat no amount of wine could wash away. And how is it going to look to the Emperor when the first major order I give is for a retrenchment? He told me to conquer Hardorn, not sit on my heels and study it! I'll look weak, indecisive. Hardly the qualities for an Imperial Successor.
"Uncomfortable" was an inadequate description for the situation, although that was how he had politely worded it in his first dispatch back to the Emperor.
He took his hands away from his burning eyes and studied the map again, this time ignoring the taunting shape of Valdemar. Ignore them. Pretend for the moment that they do not exist. Now study the tactical display.
It showed far too many hot spots behind his own lines, areas where there were still attacks on the troops, where there were pockets of resistance that melted away like snow in the summer whenever he brought troops in to crush them. This was not pacified territory. He could not and would not ask support troops to come into a situation like this one. It would not be a case of risking their lives, it would be a case of throwing their lives away.
I will have to retrench, he decided. He took up a pen, and studied the map again, then drew a line. Here—to here. The Imperial troops would retreat until they were all behind the line he drew on the map. Most of the resistance was on the other side of that line; such pockets of trouble as still remained could probably be dealt with in an efficient manner.
I hope, he thought glumly, writing up his orders and ringing for his aide to take them to his mage. A great weight lifted from his shoulders the moment the boy took the rolled paper, although a new set of worries descended on him in its wake.
It was done; there was no turning back. In a few moments, the mage would have magical duplicates of the orders in the hands of the mages attached to every one of his commanders, and the retreat would begin.
He rang for another aide as soon as the first had left. "Bring me the battle reports again," he told the boy. "This time just for Sector Four. And set up the table for me. Leave the reports on it."
The boy bowed, and took himself out. When Tremane finally gathered enough strength to rise and go out into the strategy room, the reports were waiting, and the plotting table had been set up with the map of Sector Four and the counters representing Commander Jaman's troops were waiting along the side of the table, off the map.
At least he had this thick-walled, stone manor as a command post, and not the tent he had brought with him. The weather around here was foul—no, it was worse than foul. Out of every five days, it stormed on three. Outside the windows, a storm raged at this moment, lashing the thick, bubbly glass with so much rain it looked as if the manor stood in the heart of a waterfall. It would have been impossible to do anything in a tent right now, except hope it didn't blow over.
These people knew how to build a proper fireplace, and a sound chimney, which edged them a little more into the ranks of the civilized so far as Tremane was concerned. One of those well-built fireplaces was in every room of the suite he had chosen for himself. A good fire crackled cheerfully at his back as he lined up the counters and began to replicate the movement described in the battle reports.
He had chosen Sector Four because it was typical of what had been happening all along the front lines, and because Jaman wrote exceptionally clear and detailed reports. But this time, he did not put any of the counters representing the enemy on the table; Jaman had not been able to really count the enemy troops, and everything he wrote in those reports about enemy numbers was, by his own admission, a guess. Instead, Tremane laid out only the Imperial counters, and dispassionately observed what happened to them.
By the time he had played out the reports right up to today's, he knew why the Imperial army, trained and strictly disciplined, was failing. It was there for anyone to see, if they simply observed what was happening, rather than insisting it couldn't happen.
The Imperial troops were failing because they were trained and strictly disciplined.
If there was any organization in the enemy resistance at all, it was a loose one, and one which allowed all the individual commanders complete autonomy in what they did. The enemy struck at targets of opportunity, and only when there was a chance that their losses would be slim. The Empire was not fighting real troops—even demoralized ones. It was fighting against people who weren't soldiers but who knew their own land.
Disciplined troops couldn't cope with an enemy that wouldn't make a stand, who wouldn't hold a line and fight, who melted away as soon as a counter-attack began. They couldn't deal with an enemy who attacked out of nowhere, in defiance of convention, and faded away into the countryside without pressing his gains. The Hardornens were waging a war of attrition, and it was working.
How could the army even begin to deal with an enemy who lurked behind the lines, in places supposed to be pacified and safe? The farmer who sold the Imperial cooks turnips this morning might well be taking information to the resistance about how many turnips were sold, why, and where they were going! And he could just as easily be one of the men with soot-darkened faces who burst upon the encampment the very same night, stealing provisions and weapons, running off mounts, and burning supply wagons.
And as for the enemy mages—his mages were convinced there weren't any. They found no sign of magic concealing troop-movements, of magical weapons, or even of scrying to determine what their moves might be. But he had analyzed their reports as well, and he had come to a very different conclusion.
The enemy mages are concentrating on only one thing—keeping the movements of the resistance troops an absolute secret. That was the only way to explain the fact that none, none of his mages had ever been able to predict a single attack.
They weren't keeping those movements a secret by the "conventional" means of trying to make their troops invisible, either. They didn't have to—the countryside did that for them. There were no columns of men, no bivouacs for Tremane's mages to find, no signs of real troops at all for FarSeeing mages to locate. That meant it was up to the Fore-scryers to predict when the enemy would attack.
And they could not, for the enemy's mages were flooding the front lines with hundreds of entirely specious visions of troop movements. By the time the Imperial mages figured out which were the false visions and which' were the reality, it was too late; the attack was usually over.
In a way, he had to admire the mind that was behind that particular plan. There was nothing easier to create than an illusion which existed nowhere except in the mind. It was an extremely efficient use of limited resources—and an effective one as well.
Whoever he is, I wish he was on my side.
The only way of combating such a tactic was to keep the entire army in a combat-ready state at all times, day or night.
And that is impossible, as my enemy surely knows.
Try to keep troops in that state, day after day, when nothing whatsoever happened, and before long they lost so much edge and alertness that when a real attack did come, they couldn't defend effectively against it. They would slip, drop their guard, grow weary—and only then would the attack come. There was no way to prevent such slips, either; people grew tired.
The enemy wasn't using mages to predict when troops had gone stale; he didn't have to. The very children playing along the roads could do that.
Perfectly logical, a brilliant use of limited resources. The only problem was, it fit the pattern of a country that was well-organized, one with people fiercely determined to defend themselves against interlopers, not a land ravaged by its own leaders and torn by internal conflict.
He turned away from the tactics table and faced the window, staring into the teeth of the storm. We never move in until and unless conditions inside the country we wish to annex are intolerable. The arrival of our troops must represent a welcome relief—so that we can be seen by the common people as liberators, not oppressors. King Ancar certainly created those conditions here!
In fact, if half of what he had read in the reports was actually true and not rumor, Ancar would have had a revolt of his own on his hands within the next five or ten years. When Imperial troops had first crossed the border, in fact, they had been greeted as saviors. So what had happened between then and now to change that?
It can't be the tribute, we haven't levied it yet. Imperial taxes amounted to sixty percent of a conquered land's products every year—and the conscription of all young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. But none of that had been imposed yet; it never was until after all of the benefits of living within the Empire were established. By the time the citizens had used the freshwater aqueducts, the irrigation and flood-retention systems, the roads, and most of all, the Imperial Police, they were generally tolerant of the demands the Empire made on them in return.
The taxes were adjusted every year to conform to the prosperity (or lack of it) in that year—the farmer and the businessman was left with forty percent of what he had earned, instead of having all of it taken from him—and he didn't have to worry about the safety of his wife, daughter, or sister. Women could take the eggs to market and the sheep to pasture without vanishing.
Which is definitely more than can be said for the situation during Ancar's reign.
If there was any grumbling, it was generally the conduct of the Imperial Police that changed the grumbling to grudging acceptance of the situation. Imperial citizens and soldiers lived under the same hard code as conquered people. Even in the first-line shock troops, the Code was obeyed to the letter. The Imperial Code was impartial and absolutely unforgiving.
The Law is the Law. And it was the same for everyone; no excuses, no exceptions, no "mitigating circumstances."
Assault meant punishment detail for a soldier, and imprisonment with hard labor for a civilian. A thief, once caught, was levied fines equal to twice the value of what he had stolen, with half going to the ones whose property he had taken, and half to the Empire—if he had no money, he would work in a labor camp with his wages going to those fines until they were paid. If the thief was also a soldier, his wages in the army were confiscated, and his term lengthened by however long it took to pay the fine. Murder was grounds for immediate execution, and no one in his right mind would ever commit rape. The victim would be granted immediate status as a divorced spouse. Half of the perpetrator's possessions went to the victim, half of the perpetrator's wages went to the victim for a term of five years if there was no child, or sixteen years if a child resulted. If the child was a daughter, she received a full daughter's dowry out of whatever the perpetrator had managed to accumulate, and if the child was a son, the perpetrator paid for his full outfitting when he was conscripted. That was a heavy price to pay for a moment of lust-anger, and rape was much less of a problem within the Empire than outside of it. The second Emperor had determined that attacking a person's purse was far more effective as a deterrent to crime than mere physical punishment.
And once again, if the perpetrator was some shiftless ne'er-do-well, who did not have a position, he would find himself in a labor camp, building the roads and the aqueducts, with his pay supplying the needs of the child for which he was responsible. And that responsibility was brought home to him with every stone he set or ditch he dug.
And if a perpetrator were foolish enough to rape again—then he underwent a series of punishments both physical and magical that would leave him outwardly intact but completely unable to repeat his act.
Tremane brooded as lightning flashed outside the window. Compared to life under Ancar, all this should have been paradisiacal. So why the revolt and resistance now?
Perhaps Ancar had not been allowed to operate freely long enough. There may still be enough people alive who recall the halcyon days of his father's rule. They may be the ones behind the resistance.
He grimaced. Too bad they didn't have the good taste to die with Ancar's father and spare the Empire all this work!
He would have to revise his plans to include that possibility, though. Somehow, he was going to have to find a way to counter their influence.
Perhaps if I fortify and protect select cities, and bring in the Police and the builders... no matter how golden the old times are said to be, the reality of Imperial rule will be right in front of these barbarians as an example. With Imperial cities prospering, and rebellious holdings barely holding on, the equation should be obvious even to a simpleton.
But what about Valdemar? The more he looked at it, the more certain he became that they were as much behind the resistance as these putative hangovers from an earlier time. But what could he do about them, when he knew next to nothing about them?
Then he gave himself a purely mental shake. Stupid. I may know nothing now, and it may be very difficult to get current information out, but I have other sources of information. He was a great believer in history—he had always felt that knowing what someone had done in the past, whether that "someone" was a nation or an individual, made it possible to predict what that someone might do in the future.
And I have an entire monastery full of scholars and researchers with me—not to mention my personal library. I can set them the task of finding out where these Valdemarens came from in the first place, and what they have done in their own past.
There was one rather odd and disquieting thing, however, that might concern the land of Valdemar. In all of the histories of the Empire, from the time of the first Emperor and before, the West was painted as a place of ill-omen. "There is a danger in the West," ran the warning, without any particular danger specified.
That was one reason why the Empire had concentrated its efforts on its eastern borders, taking the boundary of the Empire all the way to the Salten Sea. Then they had expanded northward until they reached lands so cold they were not worth bothering with, then south until they were stopped by another stable Empire that predated even the Iron Throne. Only then, in Charliss' reign, had the Emperor turned his eyes westward and begun his campaign to weaken Hardorn from within.
Tremane turned away from the window and walked back into his study in silence. The light from his mage-lamp on the desk was steady and clear, quite enough to give the feeling that no storm would ever penetrate these stone walls to disturb him. Odd how comforted we humans are by so simple a thing as a light.
There was an initial report on Valdemar from his tame scholars, hardly more than a page or two, lying in the middle of the dark wooden expanse of his desk. He picked it up without sitting down and scanned it over. He didn't really need to—he'd read the report several times already—but it gave him the feeling that he was actually doing something to pick it up and read the words.
The gist of it was that some centuries ago, a minor Baron of a conquered land within the Empire named "Valdemar" reacted to the abuses of power by his Imperial overlord in a rather drastic fashion. Rather than bringing his complaints to the Emperor, he had assembled all of his followers in the dead of winter when communications were well-nigh impossible, and instructed them to pack up everything they wanted to hold onto. Valdemar was a mage, and so was his wife; between them, they managed to find and silence all the spies in their own Court. Then Valdemar, his underlings, their servants and retainers right down to the last peasant child, all fled with everything they could carry. At last report, they had gone into the west, the dangerous west. Valdemar had probably known that the Empire would be reluctant to pursue them in that direction. Presumably his quest for some land remote enough that he need no longer worry about the Empire finding him bore fruit. The coincidence of names seemed far too much to be anything else, and according to the scholars, this present "Kingdom of Valdemar" bore the stamp of that original Baron Valdemar's overly-idealistic worldview.
That was all simple enough, and it could account for the animosity of the current leaders of Valdemar toward the Empire of which they should know very little. If they, in their turn, had a tradition of "fear the Empire," they would react with hostility to the first appearance of Imperial troops anywhere near their borders.
That much was predictable. What was not predictable was the shape that Baron Valdemar's idealism had taken. Where in the names of the forty little gods did this cult of white-clad riders come from? There was nothing like them inside the Empire or outside of it! And what were their horses? His mages all swore to a man that they were something more than mere horseflesh, but they could not tell him what they were, only what they weren't. How powerful were the beasts? No one could tell him. What was their function? No one could tell him that, either. There was nothing really written down, only some legend that they were a gift of some unspecified gods. Were they "familiars," as some hedge-wizards used? Were they conjured up out of the Etherial Plane? No one could tell him. Nor had the agent unearthed anything; the riders themselves, when asked directly, would only smile and say that this was something only another rider would understand.
That was hardly helpful.
I never liked the idea of employing an artist as an agent, he thought with distaste. When they aren't unreliable, they're ineffectual.
Not that he'd had any choice; the agent was an inheritance from his predecessor, and there hadn't been time or opportunity to get another in place.
White riders and horses were bad enough, but worse had somehow occurred before Ancar took himself out in some kind of insane battle with an unknown mage or mages.
Valdemar had somehow managed to patch up a conflict going back generations with their traditional enemy, Karse. And how they had managed to make an ally of that stiff-necked, parochial bitch Solaris was completely beyond him! He wouldn't have thought the so-called Son of the Sun would ally herself with anyone, much less with an ages-old enemy!
And where had all the rest of Valdemar's bizarre allies come from? He would hardly have credited descriptions, if he had not seen the sketches! Shin'a'in he had heard of, as a vague legend, but what were Hawkbrothers? And who could believe in talking gryphons? Gryphons were creatures straight out of legend, and that is where they should, in a rational world, have remained!
His agent's report credited most of this to Elspeth, the former Heir. Former? When had a ruler-to-be ever lost his position without also losing his life or freedom? Yet Elspeth had abdicated, continuing to work in a subsidiary capacity within the ranks of the white Riders, the Heralds. Elspeth was too young to have made alliances with so many disparate peoples! She'd have no experience in diplomacy and very little in governance. In the end he'd simply dismissed the agent's report as a fanciful tale, doubtless spread about to make the former Heir seem more important and more intelligent than she really was.
He wished he could dismiss the gryphons as more fanciful creations, but there were others who had seen them as well as the agent. The gryphons worried him. They represented a complete unknown; in an equation already overcomplicated, they were a dangerous variable. Were there more of them? A whole army, perhaps? The idea of flying scouts and spies working for the Valdemarans was not one that made him any happier.
He groaned softly and flung himself down in a chair. Useless to ask "why me?" since he knew why all this was happening to him. I want the Iron Throne. An Emperor must be able to deal with situations like this. If I want the Throne, I must prove to Charliss that I am competent.
Of course, now that he had begun, it was impossible to bow out of this gracefully.
His nearest rival was also his nearest enemy, and if he failed here, or even gave it up and admitted defeat and resigned his position, his lifespan could and would be measured in months or years rather than decades. He would be dead, as soon as Charliss gave up the Throne. No new Emperor permitted former rivals to continue existing; the first few years on the Iron Throne were generally nervous ones, and it didn't make any sense to leave potential troublemakers in a position to make the situation worse.
No, now he must carry this through, or else flee—into the south, into the west, into those barbarian lands beyond even Valdemar, and hope to cover his tracks well enough that no agent of the Empire could find him.
I walk a tightrope above the vent of a volcano, he thought grimly. And there is someone shaking the tightrope, trying to make me fall.
Shaking? That was odd.... For a moment it felt as if something had just picked up the building and dropped it; the unsettled feeling in the pit of the stomach an earthquake caused. But there was no earthquake, and this was no physical feeling; this was centered in the mage-senses—
—as if something strange, terrifying, and huge was looming over him—
Before he could move from his chair, it struck.
All his senses failed; sight, sound, hearing, all gone. He floated in an ocean of nothingness, bereft of any touch with the real world. Mage-energy coursed through him, without truly touching him. Once, as a child, he had gone to the Salten Sea on a holiday. A great wave had come in and picked him up, nearly drowning him, carrying him up onto the shore and leaving him gasping on the sand. This was another kind of wave, but he was just as helpless in its powerful grasp, and now, as then, he did not know if it would leave him alive or drag him under to drown. It tumbled him in dizzying nothingness, disorienting him further. He was lost....
He thought he cried out in terror, but he couldn't even hear his own voice.
Then it was over. He felt the chair he was in again, heard his own harsh gasps for breath as the breath burned in his throat. His body shuddered with the pounding of his heart, and his hands ached as they spasmed on the arms of his chair. For a moment, he thought he was blind, but lightning struck just outside and illuminated the room for a moment, and he realized that the mage-light had simply gone out.
Simply? It was not that simple; the kind of mage-light he had created was supposed to endure anything save having the spell canceled!
He blinked. There was light in the next room, dim red light from the fire. He unclenched his hands with a rush of relief; at least he wasn't left in the dark! Odd. All his life he'd had mage-lights about him—even in a room darkened for sleep there was leakage from lights in the garden, lights in the hallway or the next room. He'd never realized how dark a truly dark room could be.
With shaking hands, he felt in a drawer of the table next to him, found a candle, and took it into the next room to light it at the fire there. Some enemy had sent a magical attack at him, surely! Magical assassins had been blocked by the protections he kept constantly in place—or was this meant simply to disrupt his concentration? This attack, if attack it was, certainly hadn't been very effective! And yet—to cancel a mage-light spell within his protections meant that someone had incredible power. He controlled the trembling of his hands and forced himself to think of who might command that kind of power.
That was all he had time for—aides burst in on him, sent by every commander in the camp, all of them carrying messages of varying levels of hysteria.
That was when he realized that the effect of the—whatever it was—had not been targeted solely against him.
Somehow he managed to assemble all of his mages within a reasonable time the next day, gathering them all into his councilroom to assess the damage. "So it swept the entire country?" Tremane asked his chief mage, Artificer Gordun. The homely, square-faced man nodded, as he laced his thick, clever fingers together.
"As nearly as we can tell," Gordun replied. "It was like one of those enormous waves that carries right across the Salten Sea; it came from the east and north, and is traveling into the west and south. We think it also washed over the Empire, but just at the moment, it is impossible to tell. We can't get messages to the Empire, and I would suspect that the reverse is true."
Tremane grimaced. Like those great waves, this thing that had come and gone had left devastation behind it, and the more something was connected to magic, the worse the effect was. Every spell suffered damage to a greater or lesser extent. Lines of communication were all gone until the mages found each other again; the Portals were all down, and only the forty little gods knew when they would be reopened. Defenses were gone, or shaken. Little things, like mage-lights, magical cook-fires, weather-cloaks, timekeepers, all the tiny things that made life run smoothly for the troops, were gone, the spells that created them shattered. There would be dark, cold tents and cold meals all up and down the lines tonight, unless the various commanders quickly found non-magical substitutes.
"It was a mage-storm, that much we are certain," Gordun continued. "Although it is not like any such storm we have ever encountered before. The storm itself did not last for more than a heartbeat or two. Mages encountered a physical effect, as you no doubted noted yourself. Non-mages experienced nothing."
"That was enough," Tremane muttered. "It's going to take days to set up all the spells it knocked down, and more time to inspect anything that survived for damage and repair it."
"That isn't all, my lord Duke." The thin, reedy voice came from the oldest mage with Tremane's entourage, his own mentor, Sejanes. The old man might look as if he was a senile old stick, but his mind was just as sharp as it had been decades ago. "This mage-storm has affected the material world as well as the world of magic. Listen—"
He picked up the pile of papers on the table before him, with hands that were as steady as a surgeon's. "These are the reports I have from messengers I sent out on horses to the other mages in the army. The tidings they returned with were not reassuring. From Halloway: 'There are places where rocks melted into puddles and resolidified in a heartbeat, sometimes trapping things in the newly-solid rock.' From Gerrolt: 'Strange and entirely new insects and even higher forms of life have appeared around the camp. I cannot say whether they were created on the instant, or come from elsewhere in the world.' From Margan: 'Roughly circular pieces of land two and three cubits in diameter appear to have been instantly transplanted from far and distant places. There are circles of desert, of forest, of swamp—even a bit of lake bottom, complete with mud, water-weeds, and gasping and dying fish.'" He waved the papers. "There are more such reports, from all up and down the lines, and from behind them as well. You are well beyond my needing to prompt you, Tremane, but this cannot have been an act of nature!"
"And it isn't likely that it is residue from King Ancar's reckless meddling, either," Tremane agreed.
"I cannot see how," Sejanes replied, dropping the papers again. "Ancar was not capable of magic on this scale. There is no mage capable of magic on this scale. I can only assume that it must have been caused by many mages, working together. Perhaps that would account for the variety and disparity of its effects."
Tremane racked his memory for any accounts of anything like this "mage-storm," and came up with nothing. Oh, there were mage-storms of course, but they all had purely physical effects, and were caused by too much unshielded use of magical energies. Those storms were real storms, weather systems, very powerful ones. This was not like any mage-storm he had ever seen, and yet the term was an apt one. It had struck like a storm, or a squall line; it had passed overhead, done its damage, and passed on.
And there was only one place this storm could have come from.
"There is only one place this storm could have originated from," Sejanes said, echoing his own thoughts. "Despite the fact that it began east of us—well, any fool knows that the world is a ball! What better way to surprise us than by sending out an attack to circle the world and strike from behind?"
"You're saying that Valdemar sent this against us," Tremane replied slowly.
Sejanes shrugged. "Who else? Who else has access to strange allies from lands we never even heard of? Who else uses magics we don't understand? Who else has reason to attack us from behind?"
"Who else indeed," Tremane echoed. "They lose nothing by making life miserable for the Empire and the Imperial allies, and they could have warned their friends to erect special shields. Except that—according to all of you, Valdemar has the absolute minimum in the way of magic!"
He cast an accusatory glance around the table. Most of the mages cringed and averted their eyes, but Sejanes met him look for look.
"We still don't know what those horses are," Sejanes pointed out acidly. "And we don't recognize their magics. So how could we tell what they had and didn't have? We made our best guess based on the fact that they simply do not use magic in their everyday lives. There are no mage-lights or mage-fires—they have only candles, lanterns and torches, and physical fires. There are no Constructors; they build contrivances with no magic at all to haul water, grind grain. There are no Replicators; all documents are copied by hand, or printed with much labor. Messages are sent by those crude mirror-towers, or by human messenger. So what are we to think? That they have no magic, of course."
"But if they have no magic in daily use," Tremane pointed out, thinking out loud, "then they will not suffer from this attack as we have."
Sejanes nodded, his head bobbing on his thin neck like a toy on a spring. "Precisely. As if they used this kind of attack all the time. As if they planned for this kind of attack to be used against them."
It made sense. It more than made sense. If you expected someone to hurl fire at you, you built your fort of stone. If you expected catapults, you built the walls thickly. If you expected to be deluged with mage-caused thunderstorms, you built truly good drainage.
And if you expected to be attacked by something that twisted and ruined your spells, you didn't use any. Unless, of course, it was the spell intended to twist and ruin all other spells.
"But where did this come from?" he asked, thinking aloud again.
Sejanes shrugged, and the rest of the mages only shook their heads. "It passed roughly east to west, and at a guess I would say that if it came from Valdemar as we think, it truly did circle the whole world to get here. That is logical, and in line with the notion that it originated in Valdemar. Frankly, if I had such an attack, I would use it that way, because it would be at its weakest when it finally got back to me. It was certainly strong enough to wreak havoc for us when it reached us!"
That made sense, too. "You're saying you can't find a point of origin, though," he persisted. "If you could, we would know where their best mages were." And that useless artist could find out who they are. Then we could neutralize them.
"Not a chance," Sejanes said flatly. "At the moment, we're lucky to find the mages in the other camps, much less a point-of-origin for this thing. We are fundamentally disarmed at this point, and we'd better hope that neither the rebels nor the Valdemarans have anything planned for us, because we're so disorganized that we'll be lucky to hold the ground we've got."
The others chimed in with more tales of woe—he had already heard from his military commanders by now, and he was simply glad that so many of them were used to working under primitive and uncertain conditions. They had found substitutes for the magics that weren't working, but there was no substitute for the lack of communication. That was the worst.
Tremane was just grateful that he had called a halt to the attempt to advance before all this happened. If he had been in the midst of a military maneuver, it could have been a disaster.
Sejanes was the only one who really had anything useful to say, and what he had was all too meager. The rest simply floundered, out of their depth.
"I can only see one thing useful at this point," Tremane said at last. "Repair the damages, and armor the repairs against a repeat of this attack. Communications, first. Then the Gates; if this goes on too much longer, we'll be short of supplies in a week. Shield and reshield everything you do. Then check back with me; I'll determine what is most important."
Tremane finally dismissed his mages back to their work of repairing the damages after a little more exhortation, and slumped back into his chair, his temples throbbing. He hoped that he was the only one suffering from a headache, that it was caused more by stress than by the mage-storm; if all his mages were working under the burden of an aching head, they'd only be about half as effective as they were normally.
He rang for a page and called for strong wine. He seldom drank, but at this point he needed at least one cup of fortification.
He stared at the polished surface of the table and turned the cup around and around in his hands. One question was uppermost in his mind: How did they do this?
It was not just that the attack was like nothing he had ever seen before. It was not only the sheer size and scope of the attack. It was the randomness of it all.
Insane. Absolutely insane. Not even Ancar had been crazed enough to have developed a spell like this one.
And the effects—what possible use was there in an attack that ripped up circles of land and planted them elsewhere? Were the Valdemarans simply hoping that there might be strategic targets inside those circles? Or were they just striking for the effect on mind and morale?
Was there a meaning behind it at all? Or was the chaos really the meaning? Was this representative of how Valdemarans thought? If so, they were more alien than the gryphons they courted!
If they can do this, he thought to himself, sipping the bitter, dark wine, what else can they do? Have I taken on even more than Charliss himself could handle? Or is this another of Charliss' little tests?
That, too, was possible. Charliss and the Empire were in the east, and the storm had come from the east. The Emperor could be testing him under fire, to see how he handled such an attack.
It still could have been one of his enemies who had sent this; or more likely, several of his enemies working together.
As he reached the bottom of the glass, another thought occurred to him, one even more bitter than the wine, and more frightening than the mage-storm.
What if Charliss wanted to be rid of him? How better than to embroil him in a conflict he could not win?
Had he been set up to fail from the beginning?
Tremane ground his teeth as he pursued that thought. He had been under the impression that he was the Emperor's own choice for successor. Charliss could have been lying, or he could have changed his mind between now and when he had left. He could not ignore the possibility that Charliss now favored one of his enemies.
Could Charliss realistically get rid of him if he succeeded, against all odds and the Emperor's own opposition?
Probably not. A victory here would make him too popular to get rid of. Charliss would be forced to name him as his successor. And once I am back in Court, at his side, I think I can repair any damage that was done while I was gone.
That left him with new problems, though. I am going to have to assume that there will be interference with my orders and requisitions once the orders reach the Empire. Supplies will come in slowly, not at all, or not enough. Reinforcements may not come in time. So I will have to assume the worst and issue my orders well in advance, for more than I think I will need, once our communications are back.
And if communications could not be restored? That was another possibility.
I will have to plan to at least hold my ground with no help. A grim prospect. I have to find a way to throw as much interference in the ranks of the Valdemarans as I can....
Well, what had made them able to turn the tide against Ancar? What was enabling them to hold their own now?
If this was their doing, where had the magic come from?
Allies.
He ran his finger around and around the rim of the empty goblet. The new allies—that was how Valdemar was holding her own. So find a way to make those alliances fall apart, and Valdemar would probably have enough trouble at home to prevent any more interference in the situation in Hardorn.
He grimaced again, but this time with distaste. He used spies, he gathered unsavory information, but there was one aspect of this game of empire that he hated. Nevertheless, to buy himself time, he would use it, because he must win the game or die. It was not only his own life that lay in the balance of whether he won or lost, but the lives of all of those who had linked their fortunes with his. If he fell, his family and all their retainers fell as well.
He rang the bell that summoned one of his servants. There was one certain way to ensure that the tentative alliance of Valdemar, Karse, and Rethwellan melted away like snow in the summer, and that was to put one of his own agents into play. It was time for his Spymaster to go to work.
It was time for his Spymaster to make use of those little copies of that souvenir of Valdemar that had come into the Emperor's possession.
"Send me Lord Velcher," he said to the man when the servant arrived. "Tell him that I finally have need of his particular services."