Thirteen

Karal sat quietly on his bed, his legs crossed beneath him, waiting. His eyes were closed and his breathing was steady.

Ulrich would have said he was "meditating," of course; in fact, that was precisely what most of his teachers would say he was doing. Karal felt uncomfortable with that word. It implied that he was trying to touch the Sunlord in some way. It also implied a certain quality of "holiness" he felt equally uncomfortable with.

He certainly didn't think he was very religious, even if he was an acolyte of the Sunlord. He hadn't really wanted to be in Vkandis' Service. It had just turned out that way, due to fate, Vkandis' Will, or luck.

Still, he was being visited by a Firecat, and he had agreed to give An'desha some kind of moral support. So while he really didn't want to call any further attention to himself, it seemed to him that if he was just quiet enough, and patient, Vkandis might, well, dribble some kind of guidance into him.

So he waited, keeping his mind as free of thoughts as he could, hoping for a dribble, and trying not to ask for one.

Nothing came, though, no matter what he thought of—concentric rings in a pool of water, raindrops sprinkling on a still pond—and he gave up when his feet began to go numb. He opened his eyes and stretched, and discovered that at least the mental exercise had relaxed his physical muscles, even if it had made his extremities pin-tingly.

He was just about to swing his feet down to the floor, when he was abruptly no longer alone.

Altra flashed into the middle of the room, every hair on end, eyes as round and wide as a pair of blue plates.

:It's happening!: the Firecat exclaimed. :Brace yourself!:

And then, as abruptly as he had appeared, Altra vanished, without telling Karal just what "it" was that was happening.

He sat there, staring stupidly at the spot where Altra had been, for two or three breaths. Then he didn't have to wonder what "it" was.

From his point of view, the entire room heaved and rolled for just a moment, as if he was a speck on a carpet someone had decided to pick up and shake. Even though there were no outward signs that any actual movement was happening, his stomach dropped, and he clung to the bed as a wave of dizziness overcame him for no more than three heartbeats.

Then it was over.

That was all? What had Altra been so excited about? It was strange, yes, and felt a little like an earthquake was supposed to feel, but nothing in the room was disturbed, so obviously the "quake" wasn't really physical. Unless—was this some symptom of a disease? Could he be falling ill? Could it be some kind of plague, and was Altra warning him that an attack was coming?

Could Ulrich have it? If Ulrich was sick—

He's not strong; something serious could kill him! Karal was trained in basic field surgery, as were all acolytes. If his mentor was hurt, he could at least diagnose major problems. He was off his bed and out of his room without another thought; he wrenched open the door to Ulrich's room, nearly separating his wrist from his forearm, to find his mentor sitting up so stiffly in his chair that he might have had a metal rod for a spine. Ulrich's face was pale, and beads of cold sweat trickled down his temples; his white-knuckled hands clutched the arms of his chair, and the pupils of his eyes were mere pinpoints.

Ulrich blinked and suddenly relaxed, slumping back into his chair. Color came back into his face, and he raised a trembling hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

"Master? Master Ulrich?" Karal said, uncertainly. "Shall I get you some help? A Healer? Are you ill?"

"No—no, don't bother, my son," Ulrich replied, his voice tremulous with fatigue and other things Karal couldn't identify. "This is nothing a Healer can deal with. Did you feel anything, just now?"

"I was dizzy for a moment, and I felt like I was falling," Karal replied promptly. "Nothing more, though. Should I have felt something more?"

Ulrich managed a faint and tremulous smile, and shook his head. "Not necessarily. Altra warned me in time to brace myself. This is what he has been waiting for, what he has been warning all of us about, obliquely. And this may well be what your friend An'desha has been sensing would descend upon us. It was a mage-storm, Karal, but one unlike any we have ever seen."

"That?" Karal shook his head; Ulrich wasn't making any sense. "How could that be dangerous? It was no more than a little moment of dizziness!"

"For you, perhaps," the Priest replied sharply. "But for those of us who are mages—we just spent an eternity in that 'little moment' and for us, it was like being dropped into a cauldron and stirred! I suspect that the more mage-power one has, the worse one would be affected."

Karal gasped. "Then An'desha—"

"And Firesong as well," Ulrich replied, looking alarmed. "They will have suffered worse than I. They may well have injured themselves, falling—at the least they will be disoriented. Go to them! I can manage for myself."

Karal didn't need Ulrich to tell him twice—he shot off like an arrow from a bow, and ran all the way from the Palace to the secluded ekele.

It never occurred to him that he might find the two of them in an—embarrassing position—until he actually reached the door of the dwelling. He paused for only a moment, his hand on the latch, before going in anyway. After all, he would be embarrassed, and that hardly mattered, not when the other two might be hurt. He let himself into the garden.

There was no one there.

He headed for the staircase. "An'desha?" he called over the sound of falling water. "Firesong?"

"Here—" came a weak reply from above. It wasn't An'desha's voice; it had to be Firesong. He dashed up the stairs and found the silver-haired Hawkbrother lying in a heap with one leg twisted under him, his face as pale as his hair, and obviously dazed. His firebird was clenched to a chair arm nearby, scorching the wood in its agitation.

"My leg—" The Adept gestured at the offending limb. "I fell down."

"Don't move_; I know some field surgery." This at least was something he could do. He knew enough to check for broken and dislocated bones, and if Firesong was hurt, he could go for a real Healer.

Firesong looked at him, and though his eyes were glazed, they held some recognition in them. And questions.

"What—who—" Firesong began. Karal answered the questions as best he could.

"My name is Karal, sir," he said, "I'm a friend of An'desha's. I'll tell you about that later. You've probably seen me during Council sessions, with my master Ulrich, the Karsite envoy. I think you've sprained your ankle, and it probably hurts like anything; can you flex your toes, then your foot, carefully?"

Grimacing with pain, Firesong did so. "I—ah!—if I can do this, nothing is broken. Find An'desha," the Adept ordered. "Tell me the rest when we know he's all right."

"Yes, sir." Karal left the Hawkbrother sitting on the floor of the ekele massaging his ankle, and sprinted up to the kitchen, calling An'desha's name as he ran. The third time he called, he got an answer.

"Here," An'desha said. "Here—" Karal found him in a small room, draped to look like the inside of a tent. His friend was curled up in a ball on the floor, but it didn't look as if he was hurt. Karal dropped to his knees beside the young mage.

"An'desha?" he said, touching the mage's arm tentatively.

"I am all right, Karal," An'desha whispered, slowly opening his eyes. "I believe it is over for now."

"You didn't hurt yourself, did you?" Karal asked anxiously.

"No—I felt it building, and something warned me to fall to the ground." An'desha blinked, as if he was forcing his eyes to focus again. "It is well I did so. I think—I think this, or something like this, is what I have been fearing." He blinked again, and astonishment and relief spread over his features.

"Karal? That dread I was feeling, waiting for something terrible to come—it is gone!"

"Can you stand?" Karal asked anxiously. "Can you walk? Your friend Firesong is hurt, and—"

He was not able to get anything more out of his mouth; An'desha scrambled to his feet, unassisted, and was already out of the door and running before Karal was standing. By the time Karal reached the two of them, An'desha had supported Firesong over to a couch, and was making distressed sounds over his rapidly-swelling ankle.

Karal blushed, his face and ears hot. "I'll—ah—get a Healer," he stammered, leaving An'desha to explain where and how he and Karal had met.

By the time Karal returned with a Healer, he was also full of other news. In general, there was no real physical damage to anything in or around the Palace, and the worst physical hurt seemed to be a couple of bruises, bloody noses, and Firesong's ankle. From all he had been able to make out, some of the weaker magical defenses about the capital had been taken down by the storm and would have to be put up again, but there wasn't much more to worry about. If this was what An'desha's attacks of fear and dread had been about, it was certainly anticlimactic.

Besides the Healer, Karal brought orders for Firesong and An'desha to come to an emergency meeting of the allies and the Council, though, which tended to make him think that there had been effects outside of Haven that were a lot more serious than disorientation and the disruption of weak shields.

He was right.

"Once you are outside the shields that Elspeth, Darkwind, and Firesong erected to protect Haven, there are places all across the country where very weird things have happened," said Skif. "I went out for a fast reconnoiter with Cymry, and I saw some of them for myself. There are places where rock turned to liquid for an instant, places where circles of land have been cut out as if someone was making cookies, and circles of land from somewhere else were fitted into the holes! People brought me insects, plants, fish—even animals, all strange, all things I've never seen before in my life! People are scared."

"Surely this was the work of the Empire," the Seneschal began, but oddly enough, it was the Lord Marshal who shook his head, and Kerowyn who echoed that headshake.

The Lord Marshal deferred to the Herald Captain with a raised eyebrow and a nod, as if to say, "After you."

"It can't have been the Empire's doing, unless it was some new magic they were trying that backfired on them," Kerowyn told them all, drumming her fingers nervously on the table in front of her. "I already have short reports from two Mindspeakers behind their lines, and word is that their forces have suffered much more damage than ours have. They depend more than we do on magic, and right now they are working with most of their support systems reduced. By that, I mean they have no means of communicating between groups except by messenger, and no Gates back to the Empire for supplies and reinforcing troops. In a word, gentlemen and ladies," she said, with a certain satisfaction, "at the moment, they are well and truly flattened. The only thing that could have hit them worse would have been an army-wide outbreak of dysentery."

Silence followed that pronouncement, and Queen Selenay sat back a little in her seat. "I trust you'll forgive me if I take some pleasure in that news," she said dryly. "Base though such a sentiment is—"

"Forgive me, Majesty," Darkwind said, interrupting her. "As a mage and an Adept, I cannot help but be more concerned, rather than less. These physical effects—it seems to me that they indicate something very serious. They worry me more than the effects upon magic. How do we know this thing will not come again?"

He turned to Firesong as if for confirmation, and the handsome Hawkbrother nodded in complete agreement. "If we cannot tell what it is and from whence it came," Firesong said gravely, "we cannot hope to judge whether it will fall upon us again, nor when."

He glanced aside at Karal, who was busy jotting down notes. Karal had caught a couple of strange looks from him, but otherwise, he had said nothing about Karal's acquaintance with An'desha.

"And you don't think this will be an isolated incident." Selenay's inflection made that a statement rather than a question.

"Absolutely," Firesong replied. "And before we can make any guesses as to what it may be, we need to know more about these physical effects—what they are, at what intervals—"

As the other mages chimed in, Elspeth and Treyvan, Hydona and Master Ulrich, and even An'desha venturing a word or two, it became obvious to Karal that for this, the rest of the Council and allies were superfluous. It must have been obvious to the Queen as well, for after regaining order and promising all of the resources needed for whatever the mages required, she ended the Council session and left the chamber to the mages and Prince Daren as her representative.

Karal remained as well, in his usual capacity, but he soon found himself drafted to serve another purpose altogether.

"We need a view frrrom above," the male gryphon said, flatly. "If therrre isss a patterrrn, we may only sssee it frrrom above."

"That's true enough, old friend," Darkwind agreed. "But you should have a human with you. You two aren't familiar enough to the average Valdemaran that some poor farmer is going to be able to take the sight of you lightly. I'd hate to have to pick arrows out of your rump. And it should be someone with hands, and at least a mediocre talent at drawing sketches of what you see."

"Rrr." The gryphon ground his beak, then glanced around the table. His eye lighted on Karal.

"Him," the gryphon said. "He isss light and sssmall enough, and intelligent. He can take notesss. With yourrr perrrmisssion?" he added, nodding graciously at Ulrich.

The Priest looked the gryphon straight in the eye, as Karal shivered with mingled shock and apprehension. The gryphons wanted to fly with him? Fly? Like a bird?

"It is up to my secretary to speak for himself," Ulrich said, with a nod to Karal. "I have no objections, but rumors to the contrary, we of Karse do not make slaves of our subordinates. If he chooses not to volunteer, I shall not force him."

"Well?" the gryphon asked bluntly, turning his huge eyes on Karal.

Karal swallowed hard. "Ah—yes, sir," he replied, managing not to stammer. "If you think I will be of help. I've never done anything like this. I might only get in your way."

I might die of fright before we go a hundred paces.

"Good. It isss done." The gryphon turned his attention back to the other mages, leaving Karal feeling rather dazed.

And feeling as if he had somehow been bowled out of his path by a very heavy object. Now what have I gotten myself into?

He had occasion to ask himself that question again, a few marks later, when he saw the object that Treyvan casually referred to as "the carry-net." He had envisioned something a little more substantial; this was hardly more than a wicker laundry basket in a cradle of thin lines of rope, with laminated wood spars here and there above it. It didn't look as if it would take the weight of a child.

It sat in the middle of a patch of lawn in the gardens; there were no trees of any size here. He gathered that it would take the gryphons time to haul him above tree level. That did not comfort him much, either.

"It's stronger than it looks," said Darkwind, who had come to the Karsite suite to fetch him.

Karal held back a grimace. "I'm sure it is, sir," he replied instead, politely. He was past having second thoughts about this expedition—now he was into fourth and fifth thoughts!

"Heh. I distinctly heard a tone of 'It would have to be stronger than it looks,' Karal. There's magic in the making of it," Darkwind continued blithely, as if they weren't out to investigate the effects of the failure of magic! "Don't worry, you'll get used to it. Treyvan told me that k'Leshya use carry-nets like this all the time, that they're as safe as the floating barges."

As if I knew what a "k'Leshya" is. Or a floating barge, for that matter. He looked the "net" over dubiously; each end of the rope sling was meant to fasten to a harness worn by each gryphon, and the basket in the middle was evidently supposed to supply more stability to the rider than he would get from the kind of hammock this resembled.

The rope was a lot stronger than its light weight suggested, and Karal discovered when he tried to tilt the basket while it was still sitting on the ground that it resisted all of his attempts to turn it over, even though he could lift it straight up quite easily. So, there was a great deal more to this contraption than met the eye!

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad, after all. But still, flying?

"The gryphons will be along in a moment," Darkwind said, glancing up at the angle of the sun. "I need to start my own search pattern with Vree, Firesong, and Aya, so I'll leave you here to wait for them."

"Wait a moment." Karal hesitated, then asked the question he'd had on his mind anyway. "If what they need is someone to record what they see, why do they need me? They have perfectly good memories."

"But no hands," Darkwind reminded him. "They read, but they can't write or draw—not easily, at any rate. That lets Rris out as well—I promise you, he was terribly disappointed. He wanted a ride through the air very badly; he said he would be the first of his clan to do such a thing, which would mean he would finally do something famous-cousin-Warrl hadn't!" The Tayledras mage smiled, and clapped Karal on the back. "Don't worry. After a few moments, you'll be glad they asked you to come. You'll do very well indeed."

Karal could not imagine what it was about him that prompted such assurance on Darkwind's part, but he nodded bravely.

A few moments after Darkwind's departure, Hydona appeared from inside the Palace, wearing her harness. It was a sturdy affair of leather and brass, and it looked a lot more substantial than the basket. The gryphon clacked her beak in greeting to him once she was within earshot, and sauntered over to stand beside him.

"If you would fasssten that clip herrre—" she said to him, indicating what he should do with a touch of her talon. "And that one herrre—" She nodded with approval as he engaged the two fasteners. "That isss good. When Trrreyvan comesss, do the sssame on hisss harrrnesss." She cocked her head to one side and studied him for a moment, then added, "If it isss any help, I have carrried my little onesss in thisss verrry net. They may be fledged, but they arrre not trrruly flighted, yet. They tend to plummet."

If she trusted her precious gryphlets in this— Hydona's maternal qualities were one of the first things anyone mentioned about her. She wouldn't risk her little ones. Relief made him relax, and he managed a tentative smile.

How had she read his expression so accurately? And how had she guessed the very thing that would make him feel that the net was flightworthy? "Thank you, my lady," he replied humbly. "It does help. I have never flown before."

With that, she chuckled. "I would be verrry sssurrrprrrisssed if you had," she rumbled smoothly. "But I think you will enjoy it."

Treyvan appeared from above, backwinging gracefully to a landing beside the two of them. "I have been aloft, and therrre isss a patterrrn, I think," he said cheerfully. "Ssso—let usss sssee if I am brrrilliant, or deluded!" Caught up in his excitement, which radiated from him like warm sunshine, Karal snapped the hooks of the other side of the net onto the male gryphon's harness, and got into the basket, suddenly eager to be off. He arranged his stylus and waxboard, and didn't even think about being afraid until they were several stories above the ground, skimming the treetops.

And at that point, he was too caught up in the incredible feeling of power and freedom to be frightened.

Like most people he knew, he'd had dreams of flying before, but it had never been like this. He was buffeted by wind from all directions—from the backwash of both gryphons' wings, and the maelstrom of their passage. They were moving much faster than the fastest horse he had ever ridden. He clung to the edge of the basket—which did not tip over, even when he dared to lean out to look straight down—and stared at the city below.

Was this how the gryphons always saw things? From this vantage, the city took on an entirely new look. Patterns emerged that he would not have seen from below. Now he could judge what houses were built about the same time from the way the roofs were constructed, for instance. Now he could tell that someone who had an otherwise impressive house might be either very careless or falling on hard times by the dilapidated state of what did not show from the street level. People in the poorer sections used every bit of space, too, which was not the case with those who were better off; roofs in the poorest parts of town held plants, vegetables grown in carefully-tended tubs of soil, and were strung with lines for hanging out wash. People gathered up there, women and children mostly, who gaped and pointed at him and the gryphons when they passed overhead. Children stopped in their games, and one woman even shrieked and flung her wet laundry over her head to hide.

A moment later, they were over a district of warehouses—and a moment after that, they were outside the city walls.

The gryphons strained for altitude, and climbed higher into the cloud-strewn sky. Karal watched those clouds worriedly—this would be a very bad time for a lightning storm to blow up! But, even if he were struck from the skies, he would die knowing what it felt like to be so close to Vkandis....

"Look," Hydona called, over the thunder of her own wings. "Down therrre. That isss the firrrssst of the sssignsss."

Karal looked down obediently and saw exactly what she was talking about. Right in the middle of a green field was a circular space that held black sand. Sheep eyed it dubiously.

"We need morrre height to sssee the patterrn," Treyvan called back. She nodded and strained upward.

The sheep dwindled into white toys, then into clots of wool, then into small dots on the green field. The air got colder and thinner—not even while going through high mountain passes had Karal been this high up! His ears and nose were numb, and his eardrums popped again and again as they surged higher. Treyvan pointed, and Karal followed the direction of his talon.

A thrill of excitement touched him. There was a pattern! Beyond the circle of black sand, there was another discoloration in the middle of a field of grain, a place that appeared to be circular as well. And beyond that, a mere blot of color in line with the first two, there seemed to be a third at about the same distance as the interval between the first and second.

"Go down!" he shouted to Treyvan. "Land next to the sand-circle! I'll make some notes and take a sample; we'll go on to the next one and do the same. We'll measure that distance, and see if there really is a third and what the distance is to it—"

"And if therrre isss a fourrrth, and a fifth," Hydona added. "Good idea, Karrral!"

They dropped a lot faster than they had climbed. Karal clamped both hands firmly around the front of the basket, but felt like he would be better served by clutching at his stomach. Still, the basket landed with a controlled bump that rattled Karal's teeth but did no other damage. He hopped out and measured the circle of sand by pacing it, folded a bit of paper into a cone and scooped up a sample, then sketched and described the circle. There didn't seem to be anything alive in it; he stirred the center of it with a stick and came up with nothing but fine, black sand, completely uniform in makeup and texture. The sheep watched him with vague alarm on their silly faces but couldn't make up their minds whether to flee or stand. They were more afraid of him than they were of the gryphons and shied sideways, bleating each time he made a move toward them.

The gryphons watched, panting, sunlight glinting off their feathers. He made sure to take long enough at his tasks to allow the gryphons enough time to catch their breath.

"All right," he said, when he couldn't think of anything else useful to measure. "Are you ready?"

Treyvan nodded, and he climbed back into the basket. The takeoff was a little slower this time; with only sheep to impress, Treyvan didn't seem to be in as much of a hurry.

The next spot was, indeed, a circle—but this time, it wasn't of sand. This spot contained a short, wiry grass of an odd yellow-green; the soil beneath it was hard and full of reddish clay, so that the earth itself looked red. There were dead insects in this patch, but they didn't look any different from the ones Karal was familiar with. Nevertheless, he took a sample of the earth, the grass, and a little black beetle. Maybe someone else could make something of this.

The third circle held something quite unexpected; a section of ground that could have come from a Karsite meadow. The ground was exactly right; gray and full of stones. The plants were that tough gorse and mountain grass that only goats could eat, and in one side of the circle was a patch of kitten-paw flowers that Karal knew would not grow in Valdemar. He knew that because they were the common Karsite remedy for headache, and when he had asked for some, the Healers hadn't a clue what he was talking about.

Dutifully, he sampled this as well. He also took every kitten-paw bunch that was handy because he felt there would be a lot of headaches in his immediate future. He added notes and observations on the waxboard, and each page of paper. The distance between the first and second circles and the second and third was precisely equal.

They continued to follow a line of disturbances on away from Haven into the north; not all of the things they found were as obvious as those circles of alien earth. Several times they actually had to land to find that there was a transplant, for it was so similar to what surrounded it that only the neat circular cut-line around it betrayed that it was there. And once, they found, not a circle of transplanted soil, but a circle of fused sand.

Only once had Karal ever seen anything like this, and that had been as a child, in a place where lightning had struck sandy loam. That had left a mark about the size of his hand; this was a circle of blackened, cracked black glass, mottled and full of bubbles and irregularities, that was easily the size of a freight wagon. The three of them stared at the lumpy glass, and Karal wondered if the gryphons felt the same cold dread that he did. Something had certainly struck here with terrible force. What if it had struck within the city limits?

What if, somewhere out there, in Valdemar, Karse, or Rethwellan, it had struck within a populated area? What if it struck his father's inn, or Sunhame?

"Therrre werrre weaponsss that did damage like that in the old daysss," Hydona said softly. "Terrrible weaponsss, in the daysss of Ssskandrrranon. The Grrreat Adeptsss usssed them. We had hoped neverrr to sssee sssuch again in the life-timesss of ourrr childrrren."

Weapons? It had not occurred to him that such a thing could be a weapon. What could possibly guard against such a thing?

But remember the Sunlord; Vkandis can strike like this. Surely Karse, at least, is safe. Surely He can protect His people. But somehow, with this before him, it was hard to have faith that Vkandis would protect His people. This seemed too random, like a cosmic event, and even Vkandis Sunlord was said to be a part of a greater universe.

"We have enough, I think," Treyvan said in a louder voice, shaking himself as if to shake the terrible thought from his mind. "It isss time to rrreturrrn."

Obediently, if more than a little disturbed, Karal climbed back into the basket. But he was much too preoccupied with the thoughts called up by that circle of crackled glass to take any pleasure in the return flight.

As night fell, the mages gathered again to compare their notes in the Council Chamber, and once again, An'desha prevailed on Firesong to let him come along. To his relief, Firesong had accepted his explanation of how he and Karal had met with outward calm. Pointing out that it was Talia who had introduced them seemed to make the difference; An'desha had noted more than once that Firesong, who rarely gave deference to anyone, gave an immense measure of respect to Lady Talia.

That was just as well; An'desha had a lot more on his mind than explaining a simple friendship to his lover. The mage-storm's first bluster had stirred something up from out of Falconsbane's deepest and oldest memories, and he was still trying to sort it out.

First and foremost, he was certain, as he had never before been certain of anything, that this was what both the Avatars and his seizures of fear had been warning him about. Secondly, he knew that a part of him recognized just what the mage-storm really was—or rather, what it was a symptom of.

There was a version of Falconsbane who called himself "Ma'ar" who was somehow involved with that memory, though without actually probing after it, he could not be sure just what that involvement was.

When Firesong went out with Darkwind to do a bondbird aerial sweep to the south, An'desha stayed behind in the reassuring confines of the tiny Vale. Although he would have preferred to have Karal to talk him through this, he had approached Karal's master, the Karsite Priest Ulrich, as a substitute to help him through another search through those dreadful memories. When Ulrich agreed, the Priest suggested his own quarters as the best place for such a search, and An'desha had taken the suggestion with relief. Then he had taken his courage in both hands, just as he had done when he had tricked Falconsbane into walking out into the trap that meant his death, and plunged into a trance to trace back the memory.

It had taken a long time, and when he emerged from it, he was too shaken by the experience to say anything. Ulrich did not seem in a hurry to make him speak, though; the Priest just sat there with him, pressing a cup of sweet tea on him, letting him take his own time in recovering.

But by the time An'desha felt ready to talk, Firesong came to tell Ulrich that the rest of the mages had already gathered.

"I should be there, too," An'desha said, as steadily as he could, and felt a little glow of warmth at Firesong's glance of approval.

He's been trying for so long to get me to accept my powers and responsibilities... I suppose this makes him feel very good. In spite of the soul-churning effect of wandering through the miasma of Falconsbane's evil memories, An'desha realized that it made him feel rather good, too. Shouldering the burden—at least at the moment—was actually less onerous than anticipating and dreading the need to shoulder it. It made him feel the way he did when the Avatars had come to him—that tremulous exultation, the sense of being a tiny but bright light in a great expanse of darkness. He accepted what he must do.

He followed the others into the Council Chamber again, and waited with them while pages went around the room lighting the lanterns set into the plaster-ornamented walls. The Court Artist, who had apparently been sitting there and sketching some of the mages under pretense of recording a historical event, was sent packing out of the room by a scowl from Daren. Karal was there, sitting with the gryphons this time, bearing signs of windburn and chapped lips. His friend gave him a shaky smile. He seemed very disturbed by something, and somehow An'desha doubted that it had teen the flying that had set that expression on his face.

Karal is brave, braver than I am. He wouldn't be afraid of flying. Something else has frightened him.

"Let Karrral ssspeak forrr the thrrree of usss," said Treyvan, when all the shuffling of papers and settling into seats was done. The great gryphon raised his head into the light, and his eyes glinted with reflections. "We have dissscusssed thisss, and he hasss the feelingsss of all three of usss."

Karal cleared his throat self-consciously as all eyes turned toward him. "Well, what we basically discovered, is that there is a regular pattern to the disturbances, the ones that we saw, anyway. They are all the same size, the same distance apart, and in a straight line. We went as far as we could before turning back, and we didn't see an end to them. Most of them are—transplants, I suppose you would say. They are circles of foreign soil; they look as if a gardener cut circles of land and replaced them with circles of land from somewhere else. Most of them were so similar to Valdemaran soil that if we hadn't been looking for signs of disturbance we wouldn't have spotted anything wrong. Some were from places I couldn't recognize—the one nearest the city going directly north from the Palace is of black sand, for instance. There was one piece that I would swear was right out of a mountain meadow in Karse; it even contained an herb I know grows only there. I took samples from all of them. But one—there was one at the end that was different. That strange one—it was fused sand, like badly-made glass." He swallowed, hard. "I—it would be very terrible if whatever did that has done it somewhere where there are people."

"Did you see any of the strange animals some people have described?" Elspeth asked.

Karal shook his head. "No, nothing that didn't seem quite normal, just out of place where we found it."

"I found some of the strange animals, and even a bird," Darkwind spoke up. "Or rather, Vree found them and caught them. I had the impression that the disturbances were not regular and not in a pattern, but it hadn't occurred to me that many of them would simply look just like the land around them."

An'desha listened with a sinking heart. Oh, this sounded far too much like that ancient memory for his satisfaction! I had hoped they would prove me wrong, but they are only proving me more and more right!

An'desha simply sat and absorbed it all, unable to garner the will to speak. Not just yet, anyway.

Darkwind described the creatures that he had caught and brought back; the other mages who had gone in other directions added their observations. Karal offered more comments of his own, calmly, though with obvious deference to the others. He wouldn't venture any conclusions, but based on his own figures and those of the rest, he began to plot the rest of the observations on a larger map of the land around Haven. Karal's relative self-assurance—and his and Ulrich's occasional glances of encouragement—finally gave An'desha the courage to speak up in a moment of silence.

"You all know—what, who I was," he said softly, his eyes fixed on a spot in the middle of the table.

Every eye in the place turned toward him. Karal stopped writing.

"I still have Mornelith Falconsbane's memories," he went on, haltingly. "And those of the lives he led before he was Falconsbane. I knew this mage-storm when it struck. I recognized it somehow, out of those memories, though I did not know what it was, exactly, nor how I recognized it." He swallowed; his throat and mouth felt terribly dry, and his hands were cold. "Please—please, do not think me crazy. What I say is true, as true as I can say it. With the help of Master Ulrich, I—I sought answers to that recognition. I believe I know what this storm was, what caused it, and even why."

The silence was so thick he heard the hiss of the lantern flames behind him. "Please be patient with me—this was the oldest memory I have ever touched, possibly the oldest that Falconsbane himself had. It came from a time when Falconsbane was a mage and a king called Ma'ar."

The gryphons hissed as one, hackles and crest-feathers smoothed flat to their heads, and sat straight up on their haunches. No one else moved.

"The memory of a storm like this one—it came after a Gate was destroyed. Not a temporary Gate like we know, but a permanent Gate—one that was held ready to be opened at any moment. It was a small storm, and the effects were limited, but they were very like what you have been describing here." He swallowed again; what followed had been very, very hard to cope with, even at the remove of several hundreds, if not thousands, of years. "But when Ma'ar—died—it was with the knowledge that his realm, and that of his enemy, were both about to fall to a suicidal cataclysm. Both realms, rich in magic, built with magic, were about to have every spell within them broken within moments of his death. Many permanent Gates, shields, devices, all—and all at once. He died before he himself experienced that cataclysm, but the effects would have been very like those we are seeing now, but much, much worse, lasting for days, and traveling across continents."

"Continents?" someone asked. An'desha nodded.

"Hence, that it is called 'the Cataclysm' in the old texts," Ulrich murmured as if to himself.

"But that wasss verrry long ago," Hydona said, puzzled. "What hasss that to do with usss?"

He took another deep breath. This was even harder to speak of, but for a different reason. "I do not often tell of this, but when I was entrapped within my body by Falconsbane, I was aided by two—presences." Please, oh please, do not let them doubt my sanity!

"Avatars of the Star-Eyed, he means," Firesong interjected, and reached under the table to squeeze his hand encouragingly. "The blade Need spoke to me of these, more than once. I believe they were what they claimed to be and so does she; after all, some of you saw them when they unmade both Nyara and An'desha, giving them back more human likenesses."

"An'desha has told me of these Avatars," Karal spoke up. "I believe them to be true Visitations also."

An'desha cleared his throat self-consciously, feeling his ears and neck growing hot with a flush he could not control. "They warned me then, several times, that there was something terrible in the future. Something that threatened not only Valdemar alone, but all our lands. I thought it was only Falconsbane, but I continued to have terrible dreams, and spells of great fear after he was gone. Now that this mage-storm has come upon us and I have searched out that old memory, I—I have—" he shook his head. "I am no great mage, for all the potential power that Firesong thinks I hold, but there are some things that are now making dreadful sense to me. The Avatars spoke to me once of 'power and chaos echoing back across time.' I thought that meant Falconsbane, but now I do not think so. I have the memory of how much power lay in all those spells that were released in that long-ago time of the Mage Wars. Ma'ar believed in his last moments that it was more than the fabric of the world could bear, to have it all released in a single moment—and as importantly, to have two such centers of power interacting with each other. I think that what happened then is about to echo back upon us now—but in reverse of the original. I think that the storm we just experienced is only the warning."

An'desha drew a halting breath, and summed it up as best he could. "What we experienced was the little chill breeze that presages a hurricane."

Firesong stared at him, stunned. Now it was Treyvan's turn to break the silence.

"It isss in the trrraditionsss of the Kaled'a'in k'Lesshya that therrre werrre weeksss of mage-ssstorrrmsss following the death of Urrrtho," the gryphon said with steady calm. "The old chrrroniclesss sssay that it wasss imposssible to dessscribe how terrrible they werrre, in effect, and in ssstrrrength. The verrry land wasss torrrn assssunderrr, and even time ssseemed to flow ssstrrrangely forrr the yearrr afterrr."

"There is an oral tradition of the same among the Tayledras," Firesong managed and shook his head. "I can't even begin to guess what effect the release of that much mage-energy would have. If it could turn the land around the King's Palace where Ma'ar was into a cratered lake, and the land around Urtho's Tower into a plain of glass, there is no reason to suppose it might not even travel through the fabric of time itself. So many spells and wards are linked to time as if it were a physical presence—and even small magical explosions wreck the latticework of magic for a dozen leagues around them."

The others turned their attention back to An'desha, who looked horribly pale. "I do not have the learning to guess at more," he said humbly. "And if you will please forgive me, I do not wish to delve more into those memories that might give me that learning—at least not tonight. They make me feel ill."

"I have knowledge of the old Kaled'a'in magicsss," Treyvan rumbled. "Asss passsed to Vikterrren and Ssskandrrranon by Urrrtho himssself. The making of Gatesss warrrps time, asss waterrr warpsss wood; the making of perrrmanent Gatesss warrrps it morrre. Therrre werrre at leassst twenty sssuch Gatesss at Urrrtho's Towerrr, perrrhapsss morrre. Therrre werrre all the weaponsss that Urrrtho would not ussse, forrr they werrre too terrrible. Therrre werrre the prrrotectionsss on the Towerrr, and the magicssss of the placssesss we grrrryphonsss werrre borrrn."

Ulrich's brows knotted with thought. "I—this goes beyond what I have learned," he said at last, "but I can tell you this; I have myself had warnings from an Avatar of Vkandis that something of this sort portended."

Elspeth looked impatient. "You had vague warnings, An'desha had vague warnings, why didn't anyone get anything clear?"

An'desha winced. That was a perfectly reasonable question. And he didn't have an answer.

But Ulrich only smiled slightly. "Perhaps because even the Star-Eyed and Vkandis Himself did not know what the effect would be," he replied gently. "Hear me out. When the Gods granted mankind free will, They allowed uncertainty to enter the world. Some things can be predicted; others cannot. If I may make an analogy—I can tell you that a great storm is coming. With the knowledge I have that when the wind blows such-and-so, and the glass falls, and the sky looks thusly at this time of year, I can say that there will be a storm. But I cannot predict what places will flood, how high the floodwaters will rise, what homes will be battered to bits, and what keeps struck by lightning. As this power comes back to us, I think that even the Gods could not tell exactly what form it would take, perhaps because of what we and others have done with magic since then. They could only warn that there was danger."

"So—" Elspeth said slowly, after a long silence, "The good news is that this isn't anything we caused, and it isn't anything that the Empire is turning on us. The bad news is that this really isn't a 'mage-storm' as such. Not yet, anyway. It was—was one wave, created by the real storm that is out of sight of the land. It swamped boats and wrecked docks, but the real storm still hasn't come in yet."

An'desha watched as the faces of all the mages around the table sank as they all accepted that conclusion. If it was not the truth, it was certainly the closest thing they had to the truth at the moment. No, it wasn't a weapon, or anything they had caused. But it also wasn't anything they could stop, any more than they could stop a real storm from sweeping in.

"I should point out that there may be a bright side to this," Prince Daren said. "Kerowyn said it herself; the Empire relies far more heavily on magic than we do. The real mage-storm will hurt them far more than it does us."

"True." Elspeth chewed her thumbnail, a habit that made An'desha wince. "But it may destroy us all, Empire included. Well, there is one thing we can do, though whether it will do any good or not, I don't know. We have to get warnings out to every member of the Alliance about this, so that they will at least know what this last squall was, that it wasn't us, and that there's worse to come. There is worse to come, right?"

She looked at Firesong for the answer to that.

The Healing Adept shrugged. "My guess is that there will be. An'desha's prescient dreams were terrible things, and I do not think this little 'squall' as you called it could account for them. There were 'waves of mage-storms' before, and if the reverse of the past is happening, these squalls will build into a powerful climax."

"We have to collect every bit of information we can," An'desha insisted. "We have to know every spot of disturbance in Valdemar. If we have a pattern, maybe we can deduce the next places that will be struck."

"We—or, rather, the Tayledras—have another task before us first," Firesong interjected grimly. "Which is why I plan to send a mage-message to my parents as soon as we are done with this meeting. We must get the best shields ever created around each and every Heartstone, including the one here beneath the Palace. If that is not done, we, Valdemaran and Tayledras alike, could all find ourselves facing rogue Stones, and the storms will be immaterial for we will already be dead."

An'desha blinked in surprise as both Elspeth and Darkwind blanched. He had not thought there was anything that could rattle those two.

"Then Darkwind and I—all the Herald-Mages—had better get to work right now," Elspeth said, pushing away from the table and standing up. "Anything else can wait."

"I will help you, if you like," Ulrich offered. "I believe that I may know some shielding techniques you do not."

"We ssshall asss well," Treyvan said, with a dry chuckle. "Afterrr all, it isss ourrr tailsss in jeoparrrdy, too!"

"Shall—" An'desha began to add his offer to theirs, but Elspeth and Firesong both shook their heads.

"I know that you dread another walk through those memories, ke'chara," Firesong said quietly, "but if there is any more information in them, I wish you would look for it."

"I will be sssending a messsage to k'Lessshya, forrr accurrrate copiesss of the chrrroniclesss," Hydona told them. "Therrre may be morrre anssswerrrsss therrre."

"Huh. Rris might even have something to add. But he's so selfish with his stories!" Darkwind raised an eyebrow as a chuckle of nervous laughter met his comment. "Well, he is a kyree historian—there might be an oral tradition about this among the kyree."

"True enough," Prince Daren said as he stood up, smoothing his white uniform in a gesture of habit. "Well, I think we have wrung the last drop of water from this for now. I will go report to Selenay; I leave you to your various tasks."

He paused for a moment before leaving, as his troubled eyes met each of theirs in turn. An'desha could not sustain that contact for long; he felt somehow guilty about all of this, as if he were somehow the cause of it.

"As unpleasant as my task will be, giving Selenay ill news," Daren said at last, "I do not envy any of you your jobs.. For once, I am glad I am no mage. You must all feel like oarsmen trying to outrun a wave you cannot stop."

With that, he took himself out, and the rest of them followed his example. An'desha wasn't certain how the others felt, but so far as he was concerned, Prince Daren had summed up the entire situation far too accurately.

Despite Prince Daren's gloomy words, Karal was not about to give up the fight before he had even started! Surely there was something they could do about this! Even if they couldn't stop the storm itself, well, people built houses against storms all the time—why couldn't they build shelters against this one?

They survived back then, or we wouldn't be here now. What we need is more information. The more we know, the better we'll be able to prepare.

Maybe he was no mage, but he did know exactly where to go to find people who were absolutely, precisely ideal for the task of gathering and categorizing information.

As Ulrich followed Elspeth, Darkwind, and the gryphons to some mysterious room in the cellars of the Palace, he went off in a different direction entirely.

The clouds of this afternoon had thickened, and the air smelled damp, so he stopped just long enough to fetch a cloak from his room before heading out the side door to the little postern gate in the Palace walls that Natoli had shown him. The Guard there tonight wasn't one he knew, but it didn't much matter; most of the Guards probably knew how to get to any tavern in Haven.

His supposition wasn't wrong; the Guard was only too happy to give him exact directions to the Compass Rose, directions that matched very well with his own hazy memory of the way Natoli had led him the first time.

By the time the Guard was satisfied that he had the directions straight, thunder rumbled off in the far distance, and he thought he glimpsed a flash of lightning against the dark night sky. He set off down the street just as the first few fat drops of rain fell onto the cobblestones in front of him with audible splats.

The few drops had become a downpour by the time he reached the tavern door, and just before he opened that door, he had a horrible thought. What if the rain kept everyone away? What if I can't find them all? What am I going to do then?

But the blast of sound and warmth that hit his face as he opened the door against the rising wind told him that his fears were groundless. The Compass Rose was packed to the rafters; rather than avoiding the tavern because of the storm, the storm seemed to have had the effect of driving every Blue in Haven into the taproom.

Mouthwatering aromas hit his nose and made his stomach growl, but he ignored his hunger for the moment. Karal waited just long enough to get his senses used to the noise and light before pushing his way through the crowded tables in the general direction of the one Natoli and her friends generally used. He heaved a sigh of relief as he spotted the back of her head; one of her friends saw him and waved to him. Natoli turned around, saw who it was, and beckoned to him to join them.

He didn't need any further prompting; he increased his pace, leaving apologies to those he had unceremoniously shoved aside in his wake, and wedged his way in beside their table.

"Karal! We've just been talking about all the weird things that happened today," Natoli said, as several of the others edged over on a bench to give him a place to perch. "Some of us got dizzy, and a couple even thought there was an earthquake—and now there are all kinds of strange things outside the walls! It has to be magic, but none of us can figure out what in the Havens' name happened, or who caused it all." She eyed him with speculation. "You're in the thick of things at the Palace; I don't suppose you have a clue, do you?"

Karal silently thanked Vkandis for providing him with the most perfect opening that anyone could ever ask. "I am, I do, and I came here precisely because I need to talk to all of you about this."

That got their attention, all right. He became the center of a little island of silence in the middle of all the noise.

He wanted to blurt it all out at once, for the words were just bubbling up inside of him—but these youngsters were logical people, and he knew that the better organized his words were, the more likely they were to believe him. He knew that he would not have believed any of what he was about to tell them, if he had not been present from the beginning of it all. He would have to place them at the beginning, to prove to them that he was not deluded, or worse, making it all up out of whole cloth.

So that was how he told them, laying out everything that had happened and been said from the very beginning—starting, in fact, with An'desha's prescient fits of fear. He left Altra out of it, and the Avatars; these students were familiar with ForeSight and ForeSeers, but not Visitations from the Gods. He did not want to stretch their credulity with tales of Avatars and their ilk.

To his gratification, they listened to him, carefully and soberly, and did not seem inclined to doubt him, even when he spoke of the effects of magic reaching forward through thousands of years to reach them now. "I know this all sounds mad," he said finally, "But that's the conclusion even Firesong and Elspeth have reached. Prince Daren believes them—"

Natoli covered his hand with hers to still his plea. "We believe you, Karal," she said, then looked around the table. "Right?"

Nods all around met her question. "You've got no reason to lie to us," one of the others said. "And besides, it matches up too damned well with all the weirdnesses today. So, I've only got one question. We aren't mages, and everything we do deals with the strictly physical. Why did you come to us with all this?"

He heaved a sigh of relief and felt a huge weight lift from his mind. "Because I think you can help," he told them all. "And this is why. Right now, we're looking for patterns, patterns that will let us predict what is going to happen next, and maybe even when it's going to happen. Patterns are mathematical, logical."

"So who better to deal with math and logic than us?" Natoli finished for him, her eyes bright with enthusiasm. "Right! I think you came to the right people. We—" She paused for a moment, frowning. "Hang on, though, this is too important for just one tableful of students. This is something everyone should hear, especially the Masters."

With that, she leapt to her feet and shoved her way over to the fireplace. There was a large bell hanging there; Karal had never seen anyone ring it, so he'd assumed it was only there for decoration. Now, as Natoli seized the cord hanging from the clapper and rang it with vigor, he realized it had a real purpose after all.

The entire room fell instantly silent, so much so that the only sounds were those of the wind and rain outside, and the shoving back of chairs in the next room where the Master craftsmen were. Soon they, too, crowded into the taproom, pushing through the door in the rear wall; some looking annoyed, but most wearing expressions of startlement and curiosity.

"We have a friend among us, secretary to the envoy from Karse," Natoli called out into the silence. "He was introduced to me by my father, Herald Rubrik, and I was told I could trust and believe him. Tonight he learned of things he felt we should all hear, and having heard them, I believed they were important enough to sound the bell so that all craftsmen and students could hear them as well." She waved at Karal, who got to his feet, flushing with embarassment. "Karal, could you repeat what you just told my table?"

Still blushing, but obedient to her wishes, he did so, concentrating on keeping his words in exact chronological order, clear, and precise. When he finished, there was more silence, but there wasn't a single doubtful or hostile face in the room.

Finally, a wizened little man stepped forward from behind some of the other Master Craftsmen. From the way they all deferred to him and made way for him, Karal guessed that he might well be senior to all of them. He couldn't have been any taller than Natoli; his gray hair ringed a bald spot that took up most of his scalp, and his clothing was no richer than anyone else's here, but he had an air of competence and authority that no wardrobe could impart.

"Young lady—Natoli, is it?—you were right to ring the Silence Bell," he said, his old voice cracking. "This was a tale we all needed to hear—and a task too important for one table of students to deal with! And young secretary, you were right to come here with your tale." His eyes disappeared in a mass of wrinkles as he squinted in Karal's direction. "Magic is not the answer to all problems, as I have said in the past."

"Repeatedly," one of the boys still seated at Karal's left muttered under his breath.

"Whether or not magic will be the answer to this problem remains to be seen," the old man continued. "But if it is careful gathering of facts and measures, and equally careful advice that you want, then this is the place to look to find your experts!"

"Here, here," murmured several of the other Master Craftsmen; from the tone of their voices, Karal had the shrewd notion that they resented this intrusion of magic and mages into their world and would be very pleased to show that they could solve a crisis that mages could not cope with.

The old man paused and looked out over the taproom. "I know that there are tasks you have all undertaken and may not in honor leave unfinished—whether those tasks be study and learning, or the building of a road, a mill, or a dwelling. Nevertheless, as I can see at this moment, we all have hours of leisure that are at our disposal, or we would not be here, drinking our hosts' excellent beer and telling lies to one another. Can I request that until this crisis is dealt with, that you devote those hours to your Queen and your land?"

Karal honestly expected that no more than a third of those in this tavern would volunteer—which, philosophically, would be more trained hands, minds and eyes than he'd had when he walked in here, and far more than he ever anticipated! But without warning, Natoli jumped to the top of the table nearest her. She waved once, seizing the attention of everyone in the room, and stood there in a defiant pose, with her feet apart and her hands on her hips.

"How many of you spent your student days in the Collegium?" she asked, before anyone could make an answer, yea or nay, to the old man's question. "And how many of you saw the highborn brats looking down their noses at us, because we were going to work for our livelihood? And how many of you just twisted with envy every time one of those Herald-trainees rode by on their Companions? The highborn, the trainees, they were going to be important! All we were going to do was make their lives a little easier! Just one short step up from peddlers, that's us!"

The students hissed and booed her words, and the sour looks on the faces of the Master Craftsmen said all that needed to be said,

"But now we can do something they can't!" Natoli cried out in triumph. "Even those fancy mages, they don't have the training or the organization—they can't look at this problem logically. I don't think they can solve it! But we can! Can't we?"

An angry chorus of "Aye!" and "Damn bet!" answered her. She grinned with satisfaction.

"And we're going to solve it, if it takes every spare moment we have, aren't we?"

Again, there was a chorus of assent.

"And how better to get the funding for our projects than to show the Palace that we are the ones with the answers?"

This time the chorus was even stronger. Natoli's grin widened, and she jumped down from the top of the table, bowing slightly to the old man as she alighted.

"I believe you have your answer, Master Magister Henlin," she said, and made her way back to her table.

The old man shook his head, but grinned anyway, and his eyes disappeared in his wrinkles again. He waited patiently for the noise to die away, then gestured to the rest of the Master Craftsmen.

"Gentlemen, select your helpers; I assume you'll all be selecting your own students, but don't overlook someone who wants to work for you, or who hasn't been chosen. Master Tarn, Master Levy, please go with this young man to the' Palace and present our services to the Queen. I will organize the groups for work tomorrow morning." He sighed and shook his head. "I am too old to be traipsing out into a tempest, I fear, or I would go myself."

"Master" Tam was actually a strong and squarely-built female of late middle age; she laughed and crossed her arms over her chest. "Henlin, you haven't once left the Compass Rose as long as there was a single drop left in the kegs in all the years I've known you. I hardly expect you to start now."

Master Henlin shrugged but looked unrepentant. The other Masters moved out into the taproom, but she and Master Levy headed straight for the table shared by Natoli's cronies.

"We'll take you scruffy lot, since you're already our students," Master Levy said, as soon as they got within an arm's reach of the table. "We're both used to you delinquents, and I wouldn't wish you on some poor, unsuspecting Master who has no idea what depravities you can get up to."

Natoli only nodded, unabashed. "Suits me. What will we be up to?"

"Dawn is what you'll be up to," Master Tam replied, and smiled evilly as the students groaned. "The logical, obvious thing is that first we'll divide up the area around Haven and each group will take one piece to study. We'll look at the obvious anomalies and look for ones the Heralds and mages missed, because I'll bet there will be some—once we've measured each anomaly to within a hair, we'll come here to collate the information. After that?" She shrugged. "My guess is that either we'll be sending individual students out with fast horses to get information from farther out, or we'll just make up a set of precise instructions based on what we find, and rely on locals to do the work. Then we'll start looking for answers that fit the information. We'll probably use the Rose as our headquarters, since it's set up to hold all of us."

"Just like a class problem," groaned one of the boys.

"Exactly." Master Levy fixed the offending party with a gimlet eye. "Don't you think you ought to cut the evening short, since you're going to be up so early?"

Obediently, the students started gathering up their cloaks; students at the other tables were doing the same, so evidently the other Masters had imparted the same set of orders to their groups. "I think Lady Herald Elspeth would be the one to take your offer, sir," Karal said to Master Levy, who was nearest him. "I know she'll still be awake. Would you like to go to the Palace now?"

"Between us, I'm pretty certain that Karal and I can get you both past the gate guard," Natoli added. "They've been letting me run tame at the Collegium since I could toddle, and every Guard and Herald there is my 'uncle.' "

Master Levy looked to Master Tam for advice. The woman nodded brusquely. "Sounds as good a plan to me as any." She slung her cloak around her shoulders and took a last swig of beer from a student's mug. "Let's go."

They slogged through rain that filled the gutters and soaked their cloaks; bent their heads against wind that drove the rain into their faces and threatened to pull their cloaks right out of their hands. The relatively short walk to the Palace was as exhausting as one of those dawn-to-dark rides he and Ulrich had endured on their way up here.

At long last they reached the postern gate, and the Guard there recognized all four of them. He waved them inside without any formality—which was a mistake, in Karal's opinion, for they could have been anybody, in very clever disguises. He resolved to tell someone about the lapse tomorrow. Alberich, maybe, or even Kerowyn.

Once inside the Palace, however, the Guards were a great deal more alert, to his relief. They were left to drip in front of a fire while someone went off to verify that they were who they said they were, and to fetch Herald Elspeth. Hot spiced tea arrived after a while, and towels, both brought by pages, who hung their cloaks over frames in front of the fire to dry them thoroughly. The air filled with the smell of wet wool.

Elspeth was not at all pleased to be fetched; she looked tired and rather frazzled. Her hair had escaped from its utilitarian braids, and her face was slack with exhaustion. But the moment that Master Tarn and Master Levy introduced themselves to her and explained what brought them there, she brightened with relief, and actually apologized for her curt welcome.

"I'm dreadfully sorry I was so surly, but we just finished some very difficult work, and we're about to repeat it to double the effect," she said, pulling a damp curl off her forehead with an impatient gesture. "I can't even begin to tell you how much I appreciate this! Yes, we certainly do accept your offer, and I can't think of anyone better suited to try to apply logic to all of this." She favored Master Levy with a wry grimace. "Some of the others won't like it, but I can and will overrule them—and Mother will most certainly be relieved that someone is trying mathematics instead of intuition for a change!"

She continued for a little while longer, as both Masters glowed with satisfaction under the weight of her sincere thanks and praise. There was no doubt that she meant every word she said—and no doubt that both of them had been half-expecting to find opposition from someone who was a mage as well as a Herald. Not surprising; they didn't know her, after all.

I wonder if she's stretching all this thanks out a little— he thought, when she began repeating herself. Then he saw her take a surreptitious glance at the cloaks, and knew he was right. She was waiting for the cloaks to dry before sending them away!

Thoughtful, making up for being discourteous earlier? It could be. Elspeth, he had learned by watching, was like that.

"Well," Master Levy said, when Elspeth finished her speech, "if we're going to lead a team of unruly students out into the muck at dawn, we need to take our leave. As soon as we have anything of any substance, we will let you know, Herald Elspeth."

"Send me your measurements and charts, would you please?" Elspeth asked as the two Masters took up their now-dry cloaks. "They might help those of us who aren't applying strict logic to the problem."

"Certainly, my lady," Master Tarn assured her, tossing the cloak over muscular shoulders. "Now, by your leave?"

"I've sent for a carriage; at least you won't have to walk back in this mess," Elspeth told her, and grinned at the gratified expressions they wore. "Masters, I promise you, no matter what you've heard, I didn't turn into a complete barbarian while I was gone!"

They laughed, and Elspeth called for a page to take them to the carriage she'd ordered up. Once they had gone, she turned her attention back to Karal, who was waiting quietly for her to dismiss him.

"Was this your idea, sir secretary?" Elspeth asked, with a stern expression that was entirely spoiled by her glow of amusement and the twitching of her lips.

"Yes, Lady," he replied. "I don't know a great deal about magic—but Altra, a friend, told me to trust my own good sense. You all said you needed measurements and facts, and my own good sense said that if you were going to need facts and figures, you ought to have people who specialize in them gather them for you."

"Well, your friend was right," Elspeth declared. "And I can't begin to thank you for going out and acting on your conviction. You do your order proud." And with that, to his immense confusion and embarrassment, she kissed him, much to Natoli's open amusement.

"Now, you've done more than anyone else but the mages tonight, and you deserve some rest, so you ought to go get it," she told him. Then she turned to Natoli. "You are just as much to be thanked for seeing that the task was too large for a small group of students and acting on your conviction," she added. "It isn't every youngling who'd sacrifice personal glory for seeing that the job is done right."

Natoli shrugged. "A Herald's daughter learns not to let self-aggrandizement get in the way of the job," she said.

"A Herald's daughter?" Elspeth looked at Natoli with speculation but did not ask so why aren't you a Herald, too?

"So that would be how you met Ulrich's young secretary?" she asked instead.

Natoli nodded. "Father was the one assigned to escort them. He thought I might be able to help Karal get settled."

Elspeth smiled. "I'd guess you succeeded, since he managed to find the Compass Rose and its taproom! Anyone could get settled with a couple of Rose pints in them!" Natoli lost control enough to giggle.

But Elspeth wasn't finished yet. "There's one thing I'd really like to tell you, Natoli. No matter what it may sometimes seem like, there are important, vital jobs that can't be done by Heralds, which is one reason why this land isn't hipdeep in Companions. You and your friends and Masters are and will be doing things as important as anyone who ever put on Whites, and don't ever let anyone tell you differently. We Heralds are there to be obvious symbols to the people, but the Guard and Bards deserve most of the glory we get."

As Natoli flushed with confusion, Elspeth gave her a little salute and then left.

"Well!" Natoli said at last. "What brought that on?"

Karal raised his hands and shook his head, although he had a good idea what had brought it on. Natoli's carefully veiled expression of envy on seeing Elspeth's uniform, and the flat tone of her voice when she mentioned that she was the daughter of a Herald. "Heralds. Who knows? It was something she thought you ought to hear from her directly, though, or she'd never have said it."

And given that little speech back there in the Compass Rose, I think you needed to hear it, he thought silently.

Natoli shrugged uncomfortably. "Well—I need to get back to my bed. Coming here isn't going to excuse me from going out with the others at dawn."

"Thank you," Karal said, very softly, catching her arm as she turned to go. "We couldn't do this without you. Elspeth was right. You did some very good things. I think you're going to do more of them. I really admire you."

Natoli blushed again and averted her eyes. "I've—got to go!" she blurted, and turned and hurried away. Karal watched her go and remained staring at the door for minutes after she was gone.

Karal made his own way back to the Karsite suite, his head so full he couldn't even begin to sort out his thoughts. He was only certain of one thing.

He'd better get some sleep, himself, no matter how much turmoil his thoughts were in. Whatever lay ahead of them—this was likely to be the last moment of peace any of them would have for a long while to come.

Fourteen

But the next morning, it might all have been a dream.

Except that Ulrich was up very early and left immediately after canceling all of his appointments, and when Karal took his usual lesson with Kerowyn, she was preoccupied and actually let him score on her without making him work himself into exhaustion to earn it. He waited for an opportune moment and told her of the Guard's laxness of the night before, which earned him a nod of approval.

But after that lesson was done, he found himself at loose ends. Ulrich had forsaken meetings and discussions in the face of this greater threat, which left Karal with nothing whatsoever to do as Ulrich plied his other avocation of Priest-Mage.

Ulrich reappeared for lunch, just long enough to snatch a hasty meal and ask Karal if he had taken care of the appointments that had been canceled.

"Yes, sir," Karal replied. "Is there anything else you want me to do?"

"Not really," the Priest told him. "Really, just take a rest; do whatever you want to do this afternoon. I'll be in conference with the rest of the mages. We're still mostly at the talking stage, now that we've reinforced all the shields and—well, never mind. Just take a little holiday."

With that he was gone, leaving Karal to trail forlornly around the suite, finally ending up in his own room.

For the first time in a very long time, he had leisure to be lonely—and, suddenly, homesick. Up until now, he'd been so busy that he hadn't had much time to think about himself.

When he wasn't actually working, he was encouraging An'desha, learning as much as he could about the land and the Heralds that guided it from the library and from Florian, or discussing what he'd learned with Ulrich.

He hadn't even had a chance to talk about this latest crisis with his mentor, and that bothered him more than he had thought it would. He sat on the bed, staring at the wall, feeling very much left out. No point in looking for An'desha, he'd be with the others. Natoli was out doing whatever her Master assigned her. Florian was like Altra—you didn't go to the Companion, he showed up when he wanted to. Karal wasn't a mage—and he wasn't one of the Blues, either. That left him with no purpose at all, and nothing useful to contribute.

:Oh, do stop feeling sorry for yourself!: Altra snapped, appearing out of nowhere and jumping up onto his bed. :You've taken the initiative before. What's to stop you from doing it again? You're an adult, Karal, an acolyte, not a novice! Of course you have a purpose! You're supposed to be Ulrich's assistant, aren't you?:

"Ah—yes, but—" Karal began, starting a little at the Fire-cat's sudden appearance.

The Firecat snorted. :Well, go assist him, then! Do your job! Who's going to remind him to eat and rest if you don't? Didn't Solaris tell you to take care of him? All of the rest of them are younger than he is; if they don't feel tired, they'll keep going, and he'll feel he has to keep up with them. Who's going to take notes? Even if you don't understand all that mage-babble, you can take notes, can't you?: Altra's tail switched from side to side, annoyance in every twitch.

Karal nodded, tentatively at first, then with more enthusiasm. There was a very good chance they wouldn't exclude him if he presented himself at the door of the meeting. He was Ulrich's assistant, after all. And there probably wasn't anyone else playing secretary in all the mage-conferences.

:Besides, what you learn there, you can take to Natoli and the others,: Altra added, narrowing his eyes, which gave him a very sly, self-satisfied look. :The Seekers need that information as much as they need measurements. They really don't know how magic works, and the more you can tell them, the better they can do their job. Right?:

"Right." Karal got to his feet, and gathered up his pouch of note-taking materials. "Thank you, Altra."

:My pleasure.: The Firecat twitched his tail again, jumped down off the bed—and vanished before he touched the floor.

Karal shivered. He really wished that Altra would at least get out of sight before he pulled one of those disappearing tricks. Having the Firecat there one moment and not-there the next was decidedly unnerving.

Oh, well. He knew where the meeting was going to be, since Ulrich had let that drop—not in the Council Chamber this time, since they couldn't keep usurping it from governmental business, but in the gryphons' suite, since it was the only other set of rooms large enough to hold the gryphons comfortably.

He had never been there, but it was easy enough to find a page to show him the way_; they all seemed to know where the gryphons were. The tiny child who led him down the maze of corridors confessed as they walked that he often played with the young gryphons. Karal had to shake his head at that; how in Vkandis' name had his parents been persuaded to allow him to play with meat-eating raptors that could easily bite his hand off? That said a lot for the ability of Treyvan and Hydona to convince Valdemarans that they were as friendly as they claimed.

The chamber was at the end of a long corridor that looked vaguely familiar to Karal. It looked as if it had been originally intended for some other use than as guest quarters, with its huge double doors of carved wood. Had it been a lesser Audience Chamber, perhaps? Tentatively, he tapped on the door and was a little surprised when Ulrich himself answered it.

"Karal?" the Priest said, when he recognized who was there. He held the door as if he was thinking about shutting it again, a frown just beginning to crease his brow. "Didn't I tell you—"

"You don't have anyone here to take notes for you all, do you?" Karal interrupted, before Ulrich could chide him. "You don't have anyone here to fetch things for you; you'll have to call for a page and wait until one comes. You don't have anyone to run out and have meals and drink sent up. I can do all of that, and you already know that I won't get in the way." He swallowed a bit, and let a little pleading creep into his voice. "Please sir, I want to help. I want to help you. It's not a duty, it's a pleasure."

Ulrich's frown faded when he heard Karal's intentions. "I didn't—think you'd care to be here," he replied, with a hesitancy he had never shown before. "You've been working hard, and I thought I'd been exploiting your good nature. I was afraid we'd overwork you—"

Karal coughed as his cheeks heated. "Master, one of my duties is to make certain that you don't overwork." He lowered his voice to a near-whisper. "You aren't exploiting my good nature, sir. I am proud to serve and honor you as I would serve and honor my own father."

Ulrich bowed his head, and he blinked rapidly for a moment. "Karal, you are a remarkable young man. I am proud to be here to help you when I can. Thank you. We can certainly use your services."

Karal slipped inside the door as Ulrich held it open just enough for him to get inside. There was no furniture, just the bare wooden floor and huge pillows and featherbeds; logical, actually, since this place was meant for the comfort of gryphons, not humans. Firesong was holding forth and did not even notice as Karal took a place on the edge of the gathering, got out his pens and paper, and began taking notes in the middle of Firesong's current sentence.

"—if all of you are really set on it, I can't see how it's going to hurt anything," the Healing Adept was saying, his voice full of contemptuous amusement. "But I repeat, I don't think that these—craftsmen of yours, these engineers, as you call them—are going to accomplish anything at all useful. Magic simply does not work the way they are used to thinking. Magic is a thing of intuition, of art; you can't dissect it, set down logic, make it march in step."

"But haven't you been teaching me the laws of magic?" An'desha objected stubbornly. Karal's eyebrows arched in surprise, though he kept quiet, true to his promise. Was An'desha actually disagreeing with Firesong? If so, it must be for the very first time!

"Yes, but—" Firesong floundered for a moment, then regained his poise. "But the 'laws' of magic are simply guidelines! Haven't Elspeth and Darkwind accomplished things the mages of k'Sheyna thought could not be done, simply because Elspeth was not aware that common thought was that they were impossible? That is because magic simply is not logical. It doesn't always answer the way you think it will. You can't call it to the glove like an imprinted falcon!"

"But you won't object if I assist the engineers?" An'desha persisted. "So long as I don't use time and energy we need to put into shields?"

He's opposing Firesong! Has the moon started rising in the west!

Firesong flung up his hands in defeat. "How can I object to what you do with your free time?" he asked sourly. "If you want to waste it, go right ahead. I simply don't see where you are going to accomplish anything concrete."

"Well, now that we have that out of the way, shall we get down to the business at hand?" Darkwind asked dryly.

Firesong shrugged and sat down again, settling into a more comfortable position against one of the huge pillows, a bolster of a green so dark it approached black. Karal noted with amusement that he had chosen the only pillow in the room that harmonized with his brilliant emerald costume.

"I asked Rris if there was any oral kyree tradition about the mage-storms that followed the Cataclysm," Darkwind told them all. "So here he is, and he's going to recite it to you."

Rris rose from his place at Darkwind's side where he had been lying like an obedient dog, stepped forward into the center of the room, bowed his furry gray head once to all of them, and sat down on his haunches with immense dignity. :I trust you will not object if I tell it in the traditional manner!:

"Go right ahead," Firesong said. "You might forget something if you break from tradition, else."

Rris nodded. :Hear you all, from the times of the Change, from the times of the Falling of the Sky and the Stars,: he began, his mental voice ringing in Karal's mind. It occurred to Karal at that moment, as he scribbled furiously to get all of the story down, that he himself had changed out of all recognition ever since he had come to Valdemar. Not that long ago, simply seeing the kyree would have put him into shock. Now he was taking down what the creature dictated into his mind, without a second thought.

Was this a good thing, or a bad one?

Neither, he decided, as his fingers flew across the page, filling line after line with meticulous script. It's just change. You change, or you turn into a dry old stick.

And another thing occurred to him.

Dry old sticks break under pressure. So maybe it was a good thing after all. The last thing they all needed right now was one of their number who would snap like a twig.

It had been a long day; it was going to get longer before Karal saw his bed. Nevertheless, when An'desha intercepted him on his way out of the gryphons' room and asked him to make a map of the way to the Compass Rose, he volunteered to act as An'desha's escort instead, after they both had some supper. Ulrich was to work with the Tayledras and Elspeth, strengthening shields again; that left Karal free to make a hasty copy of the day's notes and show An'desha the way.

That was why they both found themselves trudging through a night made darker by the clouds still overhead, splashing through puddles left by the rain, with the sounds of carousing coming from the lantern-lit taverns all around them.

"Thank you for coming with me to where these engineers meet," An'desha said shyly. "I would be very uncomfortable, going there alone."

Since this would be the first time, to Karal's knowledge, that An'desha had ever left the grounds of the Palace, he suspected that "uncomfortable" was an understatement. Terrified might be more apt.

But An'desha was set on going. He felt that someone was going to have to try to explain magic to those without it, and that he was the best person for the task. That was the argument Karal had walked in on this afternoon. An'desha had volunteered his services, and Firesong had objected.

Firesong might be jealous; he might be afraid that An'desha will find someone else he's attracted to. I wonder if that occurred to An'desha as an explanation for all his objections?

"I have all these notes from our meeting to deliver, and I need to get copies of what they've done for our mages," he replied. "And besides—An'desha, I know you're shy, and I just couldn't let you walk in there alone, face all those people you don't even know. That's what friends are about, right?"

"I had hoped so." An'desha smiled tentatively. "But you are stretching yourself very thin, running errands for all of us, transcribing the notes of our meetings for us. I hadn't wanted to ask you."

"Before this is over, we're all going to be exhausted, so don't worry about it," he told the young mage. At that moment, they reached the door of the tavern, and he paused for a heartbeat on the threshold. "Well, brace yourself. This is not going to be like anything you've ever seen before."

An'desha did visibly brace himself, but he still winced as the door opened and a steady stream of babbling voices poured out over them.

But the voices all stopped when people noticed just who it was that was standing in the doorway. Natoli hurried over to them, and Master Tarn was right behind her.

"We've got notes and charts for you," Natoli began.

"And I've got notes from the mages' meeting for you," he replied. "And more than that, I've got a mage with me who wants to show you some of how magic works." An'desha clearly wanted to shrink back away from all the people, but only his trembling hands betrayed his nervousness. "An'desha, this is Natoli, and this is Master Tarn. Ladies, this is An'desha; he's both Shin'a'in and Tayledras, and he's one of the mages that works with Lady Herald Elspeth."

"Very pleased to see you, Master An'desha," Master Tarn said, folding her hands together and bowing a little to him, rather than seizing his hand to shake it. That was a rather tactful gesture on her part, Karal thought. "We badly need someone to help us understand how these magic powers of yours work. Right now, we're in the position of trying to read the wind."

"I can understand," An'desha replied, so softly that Master Tam had to lean forward to hear him. "I am happy to be of help."

"Well, come over with us, then. Karal, I think Master Henlin wants your notes so he can have copies made; join us when he lets you go." Master Tarn took charge of An'desha as if she were used to shepherding shy youngsters all the time. Perhaps she was; it occurred to Karal that many of her students might be just as shy and introspective as An'desha. Intelligent children generally got into trouble with their less intelligent peers—it had happened that way to him when he'd been taken by the Priests, after all.

I only hope none of her students have had half so exciting a life as An'desha. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

He brought the notes to Master Henlin, who was in the Masters' Room at the rear of the tavern, presiding over a sea of paper, hundreds of sheets of it, covered with figures and diagrams. Then, relieved of his burden, he hurried back out to see if An'desha was still holding up well under the scrutiny of so many strangers.

He was—in fact, he was deep in a discussion of where magic energy came from.

"—so some mage-schools have built up reserves, like a cistern or reservoir, and that is what their Master mages can tap into when they need it," he was saying. "It all comes from the same source, though—the energy of life that is all around us. All of us living creatures shed it as we breathe and move."

"And what about the Adepts you mentioned?" Natoli asked. "Do they use something special? Or are there other reserves only they can use?"

"There are," the young Adept replied, nodding. "But they are not the reserves that have been built up by other mages. Rather, they are the reserves that exist where two or more natural lines of force meet. These are called 'nodes,' and they are so powerful that only an Adept can control the energy that pools in them. Anyone else trying would either be unable to touch the power, or would be engulfed by it and devoured. Charred."

One of the boys shivered. "Not a pleasant prospect."

"No," An'desha replied soberly. "It is not. But you see, now, that this all does respond to natural laws. The power comes from somewhere, and goes elsewhere, like water flowing to the sea. Where it goes eventually, is to a place we call the Nether Planes, where everything is made of chaos and energy. And I suspect that it comes back into our World Plane from there, through the medium of living things."

"Time to speculate about that when we have the leisure," Master Levy interjected, spreading a map out on the table in front of An'desha. "We've been over every thumblength of ground a half day's ride from Haven, and this is what we've found so far. Transplanted areas are in green, blasted areas are in red, transformed areas are in yellow."

An'desha bent over the map to study it; Karal whispered to Natoli.

"Transformed areas?" he asked. "What are those?"

"Places where whatever was there was changed," she whispered back. "Everything in them is the same as it was, but inside those circles, it's another season. We're in late summer right now_; there, it's fall, winter, or even spring. Plants that should be in fruit are blooming, or dormant, insects are dead or in cocoons or eggs, and birds or animals are in winter or courting colors."

He blinked at her in surprise; she only grimaced. "Don't ask me, I have no notion what could have caused something like that," she told him.

He turned his attention back to the map, thankful that there were fewer red dots than green or yellow. There definitely was a pattern there—the dots were spaced out at equal intervals, and if you followed a line of them, they would sequence as three greens, a red, and three greens and a yellow. But there didn't seem to be a center to the pattern, or a point of origin.

"I wonder—" An'desha began, then stopped.

"Go ahead," Master Tarn urged. "You know magic, and we don't. If you can suggest some kind of meaning or interpretation, I for one would be happy to hear it."

"Well—I wonder if what has happened is that with the transformed and blasted places, there was too much energy brought to bear, and that is why the damage?" Then he shrugged. "I am grasping at straws."

"That's no more than we've been doing," Master Levy confessed to him. "Let's follow that theory for a moment."

Karal couldn't understand more than half of what either of them said, but they seemed to understand each other, and that was the important part. Since An'desha didn't seem nearly as shy of these people as he had when he'd first walked into the room, and since Natoli was immersed in the discussion and ignoring everything else, Karal finally left them and assigned himself to one of the desks where others his age were making copies of the same chart that Master Tarn had unrolled in front of An'desha.

I can make a copy of this to take back with me; that will save these others from having to make a spare. He helped himself to pens, ink, and paper, and when he had finished that task, he began making copies of his own notes for the other Masters, just as the rest were doing.

When his tired eyes threatened to unfocus completely, he finished one last page, and rolled up his map and the pages of descriptions of the "magic circles," and went to find An'desha.

Despite the latter's promises to Firesong, An'desha had been giving demonstrations of mage-craft to the engineers, and he was tired and ready to go back to the Palace. When Natoli declared her intention to defect as well, the whole group broke up, yawning.

"I'll walk back to the Palace with you," she said, as Karal handed An'desha back his cloak. "I've got a room in the wing where they put some Blues who don't have patrons or aren't highborn, and who also don't live in town. We share it with the Healer—and Bardic-trainees."

"I'd wondered," Karal admitted, slinging his cloak around his shoulders, as Natoli found hers in the pile of student Blues. "You kept popping up in the Palace and you acted as if you belong there."

"In a sense, it's the only home I have," Natoli admitted. "Father was Chosen after my mother died of complications of childbirth. No, it wasn't me," she added hastily. "It was a still-birth, and I was about four. He brought me with him to the Collegium since he hadn't any place else to take me, and I've spent all of my life here. When he went out on circuit, one or another of the Heralds would take care of me until he got back."

Well, it wasn't the worst sort of childhood, though it was nothing like the warm family situation Karal had enjoyed.

"It sounds lonely," An'desha said ingenuously as Karal opened the door and held it for the two of them.

Natoli only shrugged as she stepped out into the dark street. "Mostly, it was odd. When Father was here, he made sure I knew he wanted me there, and that he cared about me. For lack of anything else to do, once I got old enough, I took most courses in all the Collegia except the ones in Bardic that had to do with performing and composing, and the ones in Healer's that had to do with really Healing someone. Then one day I realized what I wanted to do_, I went to Master Tam and asked to be taken on, and she asked me why I had taken so long to figure out what I was good at."

"She would," Karal said dryly. "I have the impression that Master Tam would never take an indirect route when there was a direct one available." Other students drifted along behind them, talking quietly to one another, voices murmuring across the otherwise silent street.

"She does tend to bludgeon things," Natoli replied, but smiled. "Father was just pleased that I'd found my avocation; he granted his leave, and I've been studying with Master Tam ever since."

"At least you had some choice in the matter," Karal replied, with some envy. "I was quite literally kidnapped by the Priests." He went on to describe his own childhood, while An'desha and Natoli both listened with interest.

"Odd that of the three of us, I am the one who had the most normal childhood," An'desha mused. "How very strange."

"Well, you made up for it." Karal slapped him lightly on the back. "Never mind; I've figured out that anyone who is more intelligent than the people around him has troubles as a child. The important thing is not to dwell on those troubles and make them into all you are. You should do what you can with what parts of your life you have personal control over!"

"That makes good sense," Natoli applauded, and changed the subject. "I wonder what late night food we can gain personal control over?"

Several days passed, with Karal serving double duty: to the mages and with the engineers. As the days went by, the engineers collected more and more information and added it all to their charts, tables, and maps. Florian passed on a great deal more of what Master Tarn referred to as "data" from other Companions out in the field with their Heralds—all of it was pertinent, and most of it was much more accurate than the information coming from humans. After the third day of this, Karal paused in the midst of his copying, struck by the fear that all this might not be the sort of thing Vkandis would approve of his acolyte doing. After all, he hadn't seen Altra in days. Was the Sunlord annoyed with him?

At that very moment, Altra wandered through the room, tail waving like a banner in a light breeze.

Karal froze, and not just because Altra had appeared the moment Karal thought of him, but because it was here, in the middle of a crowd of—well—unbelievers. What were they going to think? Altra wasn't exactly inconspicuous!

But the others did nothing unusual. The other students and teachers saw him—they avoided trampling him when he was in their path—but they didn't seem to see anything odd about him. He jumped up onto one or two tables and surveyed the figuring and charting going on with aloof interest, and none of them stared at him. He might very well have been a perfectly ordinary tavern cat.

Considering that he was four or five times larger than any domestic housecat that Karal had ever seen, that was certainly strange!

But Altra eventually made his way to the back of the room where Karal sat staring at him, and gave Karal an approving wink.

:They see only what they are expecting to see,: the Firecat said cryptically. :I have more information for you. The same patterns are in Karse and southward. Tell the others. You'll get the maps and so forth that Solaris has sent you in a few days.:

And with that, Altra strolled underneath a table, and did not come out on the other side. Karal sat there with his pen still in his fingers for a long time.

Well—at least he approves, Karal thought, dazedly. That was, after all, one less worry.

But given his current luck, with every worry that he lost, four more rose to take its place.

A day later—and the half-expected second wave swamped them. It came exactly one day short of a fortnight, and at very nearly the same time of day as the first one.

This time the areas of disturbance were not as obvious until a few days had passed, and someone noticed that there were places where plants and insects had—changed. They weren't dead, but they certainly weren't the same anymore. The plants in particular had undergone a transformation that made them act like primitive animals. They reacted to the presence of other living creatures, some by shrinking away, but others by reaching toward whatever was near them. Some of the plants were observed trapping and presumably eating insects; others were growing strange new forms of defense; thorns and spikes, saps that had a terrible stench or were outright poisonous. And two days after the storm passed over, when a farmer found his child in a patch of the changed plants, crying hysterically, with hundreds of tiny thorns in her flesh that she swore the plants had flung at her, Selenay ordered that-samples be sent to the Palace and the parent plants be destroyed wherever they were found.

The mages studied the changed plants without learning much—except that Firesong noted a definite resemblance to some of the dangerous "thinking plants" in the Uncleansed Lands of what Valdemarans called the Pelagir Hills.

One day short of a fortnight later, the third storm-wave arrived.

If this keeps up for much longer, I'd better think about growing gills. Karal trudged through yet another nighttime thunderstorm, his cloak already soaked, heading for the Compass Rose. But this time, he felt a little more cheerful than at any time before.

According to Firesong, this last wave was just a trifle weaker than the previous two. This time virtually no shields had gone down before the onslaught, and although even non-mages had experienced the disorienting effects of the wave, Firesong was positive that this mage-storm hadn't lasted as long as the previous two had. No one had reported in from the area outside Haven yet, but the mages were guardedly optimistic that the worst was over.

Such good news was more than compensation enough for a long slog through a driving rain, at least to Karal's mind. He couldn't wait until the others heard!

He opened the door of the tavern and stepped through into warmth and light, only to find virtually everyone clustered around a single table. They were ominously quiet, and when they all turned to see who had entered, there was not a single cheerful expression among them.

"I've got good news!" he said into the oppressive silence. "Firesong says this last storm was weaker!"

Their expressions did not change, and he felt his own spirits dropping. "It was weaker, wasn't it?" he faltered. "Firesong said so. We didn't lose any shields this time—"

Master Levy shook his head slowly. "I'm afraid your Firesong is mistaken," he replied. "Not only was it not weaker, it was actually a little stronger than before. The reason nothing magical was affected was because you've managed to build up good enough shields to protect everything magical that you still retain—and you've pared the number of magical things you need to protect that way to the absolute minimum. Come over here and look at this."

He gestured to something in a wooden box with a grate over the top of it. Karal couldn't see clearly what was in it, but it sat on the table next to Master Levy and had been the object they had all been clustered around. His mouth suddenly dry with trepidation, Karal edged over to the group and looked down into the box itself.

It was an animal, but no animal he had ever seen or heard of before. Mad red eyes stared up at him, and long, hairless ears flattened against a viperish skull covered with a thin coat of gray hair. It snarled at him, and he inadvertently backed up a pace.

"Don't touch it," someone warned. "It just about took Semon's hand off."

"What is it?" he asked, fascinated and repulsed at the same time. It looked vaguely familiar, somehow.

"Nearly as we can tell, it was a rabbit." Master Levy looked down at the creature and shook his head. "Or rather, most of it was a rabbit. We can't tell if this was just a case of several creatures being melded together into something new, or a rabbit that got turned into some sort of meat-eater. That is what your latest wave did; we've sent word to the Palace to warn people out in the countryside. We're just lucky that there generally aren't any large creatures inside those circles of change. I don't know what something as large as a dog would turn into, just as a guess, I'd say our wave of disruption is now powerful enough to affect larger animals."

"Think what would happen if this hit a cow, or worse, a pig," someone added. Master Levy shuddered, and Karal didn't blame him.

"Or a human. Another evidence that this wave is stronger is the storm outside," Master Levy put in as an afterthought. "There's always a thunderstorm after the wave passes. This one is worse than the one before, which was worse than the one before that."

"There's always good news to go with bad news," Natoli said, as Karal finally shivered and turned away from the creature on the table. "With three waves, we have enough information to make some predictions. Now we know when the next wave will come, we know where the affected circles will be, and we know something else. We've been calling these storms 'waves' just as an analogy, but it turns out they really are waves."

"You can? They are?" The sick feeling in the pit of Karal's stomach cleared. "But that's wonderful! If we can predict these things, we can at least make certain nothing like that thing can happen!"

"For now," Master Levy said ominously. "The size of the affected circle is growing, too, as the duration of each wave increases with its power—"

"Wait!" Karal exclaimed. "Don't tell me. You'll have to tell the council of mages—and you ought to come with me and tell them now, while they're still congratulating themselves that Valdemar survived the worst of it and came through all right! They haven't told anyone else yet. We have to stop them before they tell Selenay."

"He's right," creaked Master Henlin, running a hand over his bald spot. "If we wait until tomorrow, they might not believe us, even with that thing in the box to back us up. Even if they did believe us, they might not want to appear like fools, telling the Queen this directly after telling her everything would be fine. Right. Levy, Norten, Bret; you all go with him. Take all the new charts and the wave-drawing, so they can see for themselves how the waves are acting. Go! We'll all stay here until you come back with word. Maybe now that we know how these waves are acting, we can work out a more effective defense against them."

Rolls of paper were carefully inserted into waterproof cases; Cloaks were collected, and Karal found himself once again leading a group of men who otherwise would never have given him a second glance out into the teeth of a storm.

This physical storm was indeed much worse than the ones that had followed the last two waves. "This alone ought to show your mages that we're right!" Master Levy shouted over the thunder. "That An'desha showed us how unshielded magic-power can affect the weather, and if this isn't an example of just that, I'll eat my map case!"

Karal didn't think that the case was in any danger of becoming an entree, given the severity of the storm. He just hoped that the others were still where he had left them. The little parade struggled against wind and rain all the way to the Palace, despite the sheltering effects of the buildings on either side of the street. Several times Karal was afraid they'd be blown off their feet, but it never actually happened.

Kerowyn must have given the guards a fairly severe lecture; some time was consumed in verifying that everyone was who he said he was, but it was time that Karal didn't begrudge. Master Levy did, though; he stormed up the path to the Palace, grumbling under his breath, and Karal trailed in his wake, followed by the other two Masters. Norten and Bret were too busy trying to keep their cloaks around them to say anything, which didn't make Karal feel any too comfortable.

But once they reached the doors of the Palace, Master Levy allowed him to take the lead again, even though the Master's expression was as stormy as the night outside. It was just fortunate that the gryphons' quarters were not very far; Karal feared that another delay might well cause the temperamental Master to explode.

But maybe it isn't just temper; maybe it's worry. Worry and fear made people sometimes act in ways that you wouldn't expect. Ulrich just got more clever when he was worried. Maybe Master Levy had fits of bad temper when he was concerned about something.

Never mind, he told himself, as he reached up to knock on the door to the gryphons' rooms. Temper-fits are hardly our worst problems at the moment.

As the door opened, Karal recognized the voice just beyond as belonging to Elspeth, which meant that the single most important person they needed to convince was still here. He waved the others inside first, and wondered for a moment if he just might possibly be able to get away and let the Masters do all the explaining.

No, he told himself sternly. That would be cowardice. And, reluctantly, he followed them inside.

Karal listened to Master Levy speak about mathematics and theory with great envy for Natoli, who had such a good teacher. If he'd had teachers as good as this man, he might have had more understanding of and love for mathematics. Instead, math was as arcane a subject for him as magic, and he remembered his mathematics lessons as being ordeals.

"...so you see," Master Levy said, with a certain grim satisfaction, "by using this mathematical model, I was able to predict the size and location of all of the areas of disturbance from this last wave. We will have parties out in the countryside verifying my predictions, of course, but the ones we were able to reach before darkness fell were all where I predicted they would be and the size I expected they would be."

"So these storms are really waves; they act like real waves?" Elspeth asked, weariness warring with the need to understand, both emotions mirrored in the set of her mouth and the tense lines around her eyes. Darkwind looked over her shoulder at the charts and maps, his brow creased with exhaustion and anxiety.

"In many ways," Master Levy told her and raised a sardonic eyebrow. "I take it that I have convinced you?"

"Just by virtue of the animal you found. I've seen the creatures in the Uncleansed Lands for myself," she replied. "This rabbit-thing you found sounds much too like them for me to disbelieve you."

"And I must agree, at least that the waves are growing stronger, not weaker," Firesong said with extreme reluctance. "They must be growing stronger to have had the effect of warping an animal in such a manner. But—still—mathematical models? Magic does not work that way!"

To Karal's surprise, the look that Master Levy bestowed on Firesong was one of understanding and sympathy. "Sir, I comprehend your feelings. Yours is an intuitive nature, and your understanding so deep that you intuit the formulas and laws. So must an artist feel when he picks up a shell, paints a sunflower or creates an image of a snowstorm—yet I can reproduce that sunflower in precise mathematical terms, and every snowflake is a mathematically exact shape. If I show you in such a way that you can understand me, will you believe that your magic does answer to predictable laws?"

Numbly, Firesong nodded. Master Levy had a force of personality—when he cared to exert it—that was easily the equal of Firesong's. This must have been a rare experience for the Hawkbrother Adept, to find someone who was his equal in personality and intellect.

"Look. This was your original Cataclysm," Master Levy said, pulling out a clean sheet of paper and a pen and drawing concentric circles on it. Karal marveled at that—there were not many people in his experience who could draw an even circle without the use of tools. Master Levy must be something of an artist in his own right.

"There were two centers of disruption," the mathematician continued. "One here, where the Dhorisha Plains are now, and one here, where Lake Evendim is. The force spread outward, in waves—each of these circles represents the apex of the wave—you see where they meet and touch as they spread outward? That is where your points of extreme disturbance are, where the apexes of two waves meet."

"So why were the areas of change so great in the original Cataclysm?" Firesong asked stubbornly. "They weren't little circles of devastation, they were huge swaths, reaching from Lake Evendim to beyond where the eastern border of Hardorn is now!"

Master Levy smiled patiently. "The very first waves had a period—a 'width,' if you will—that was enormous—roughly the equivalent of several countries. In areas of the apex of the wave, disturbance was powerful enough that there was no need for waves to interfere with each other to distort the real world, the wave itself was what did the initial damage, and created what we call the Pelagir Hills and what you call the Uncleansed Lands—and yet, entire nations who happened to be in the trough of the wave remained relatively unscathed. I suspect that you would find that where the apexes of the first two great waves met, you would find areas of such damage that nothing lived through it."

Firesong bit his lip, as if Master Levy had triggered a memory of something, but he remained silent.

"Now—this is another guess, but I believe that the first wave of shock, the one from the initial destruction of the two centers, was followed by waves of successively shorter period and lesser strength." He cocked his head at Firesong, as if-to ask if Firesong understood.

"Perhaps—" Firesong murmured reluctantly.

Master Levy flashed Karal a conspiratorial glance. "Now look; I am drawing the circles closer together, for a reason. The next waves had a period that was shorter, and the next, shorter still. The areas of overlap were correspondingly more frequent, and smaller, until the last of the waves of disturbance passed. As the waves grew weaker, and the period smaller, the disruptions were confined to the places where the wave-apexes intersected. That is why we are finding little circles of disturbance at regular intervals; the intervals represent a combination of the period of the two sets of waves. And the periods presumably lessen due to effects analogous to how the troughs of waves in deep water reduce when they 'drag' the floor of the body of water. Expenditure of energy."

Firesong studied the rough diagram and nodded slowly, then began twisting a lock of his long silver hair in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture.

Firesong! Nervous! The sun will surely rise in the west tomorrow!

"Now, if what I believe turns out to be the truth, these waves of disturbance are returning through time, in a mirror image of how they occurred in the first place." Master Levy waited, like the teacher he was, for someone to volunteer the next piece of the puzzle.

"Do you mean that they are beginning small and weak, and will end enormous and enormously powerful?" Darkwind hazarded.

"I do," Master Levy replied, nodding at Darkwind as if the mage was a particularly good student. "And I also mean that they are traveling in the opposite direction; instead of radiating out from the Plains and Lake Evendim, they are converging on the Plains and Lake Evendim. Which means that all their force, in the end, will be concentrated in those two spots."

"Oh." Elspeth held her knuckles to her mouth in stunned silence.

"And as the waves increase in strength, the areas of disturbance will no longer be confined to the points of intersection, but will be as wide as—" Master Levy paused for a moment, "—at a guess, I would say roughly a third of the wave's period. Once again, that could be an area the size of a country, or larger."

Firesong sat down slowly. "You have convinced me, mathematician," he said, his face blank. "Your proofs are too good. And you have told me that my people are doomed, mine and the Shin'a'in. They lie directly in the area that will be affected the worst. No shields can ever withstand the force of the kind that is mounting against them."

"Feh!" snorted Master Norten into the heavy pause that followed. He was a short, squat fellow who had remained silent during all of this. His exclamation pierced the ponderous silence, making all of them start.

"What?" Elspeth faltered.

"I said, begging your pardon, Feh. No one is doomed, young man." Master Norten favored Firesong with a sharp glare, as if he had caught Firesong being impossibly dense. "We have enough information to predict the period of the next waves! We have enough information to know what the strength will be, and where the intersection points are! Right now, the danger is only at the intersection points; we can keep people and animals out of them; we can destroy the plants inside them. But haven't you been paying attention? We have a temporary solution, enough to buy us time to find a real solution!"

"You have?" Elspeth gasped.

"We have?" Master Levy gaped.

Master Norten took the cane with which he had been supporting his bulk and rapped Master Levy with it. "Of course we have, you dolt! All you ever see are your damned mathematical models! Think, man! You're the one who pointed out that these spurts of magic are acting in a way we recognize! Can't you understand that these—these magic-waves—are acting exactly like waves of water? And can't we protect harbors and anchorages from real waves with breakwaters? So why can't these mages come up with magical breakwaters to protect important places, places like cities and those nodes of theirs and all?" He glared at all of them, as if he could not believe they had not seen what to him was so obvious. "Hell and damnation! Why can't they just build a magical breakwater to protect every country in the Alliance?"

"This is why I am a mathematician and not an engineer," Master Levy replied, with chagrin. Master Norton snorted again, and looked very pleased with himself.

"I—I suppose it ought to be possible," murmured Darkwind, his brows knotted as he thought.

"Well, then, you ought to damn well do it, boy!" Master Norten retorted. "We can surely give you the dates and times and interference points. We can calculate the strength and period if you help us establish scales. With all that, I don't see why you can't do the rest, instead of sitting on your behinds, whining about being 'doomed'!"

"But magic doesn't work that way," Firesong whispered—except that it sounded more like a plea than a statement of fact.

"I'm sorry, Firesong," Karal replied, not at all sorry to see Firesong at last convinced that he was not the greatest expert in all things. "It does." He handed Firesong a set of all of the tables for the last two waves, his own copies that he had been keeping with him. In the face of all the neat rows of dispassionate, logical figures and formulas, finally even Firesong had to concede defeat. "All right," the Healing Adept said at last. "It does. And I promise that I will learn how to use all of this. How long do we have before the real mage-storm breaks?"

"We haven't calculated it yet," Master Levy responded instantly. "We only now have enough information to predict how much stronger the next waves will be from the ones preceding them. It would help if we had an idea how strong the original waves were, and what their period was."

"Farrr enough that the Kaled'a'in werrre engulfed in the rrresultsss of the Cataclysssm, dessspite the grrreat distancsse they had gone frrrom Urrrtho'sss Towerrr," Treyvan rumbled. "Howeverrr—we alssso trrraveled to a point outssside that, beforrre we finally found a placsse wherrre the land wasss clean. Therrre we ssstopped. Perrrhaps we can give you an essstimate."

"An estimate will do," Master Levy told the gryphon. He had started when Treyvan first spoke, but he seemed to have accepted the fact that the gryphons could speak with intelligence.

"I can send a mage-message," Firesong volunteered instantly. "And—wasn't there something in that history Rris recited about how long the original—ah, I suppose we could call them 'aftershocks'—lasted?"

"It was fairly vague," Karal replied after a moment, checking his notes from that first meeting. "I've got it here. He just said, 'many moons.' That's not much help."

Firesong blinked, as if he had forgotten that Karal had taken notes for all their meetings.

"Except that we know we have at least a few months to figure something out before the monster comes upon us," Master Norten was quick to point out. Then he yawned hugely and looked surprised. "Gods and demons, it must be late, or I wouldn't be yawning! Look, none of us are fresh enough to do any good right now. What if we three meet with you mages in the morning, and we'll see what we can work out from here?"

"That—would be good." Firesong bowed his head. "I hope you will forgive me. I am not used to being wrong. It sticks like a barb in my crop."

"I can understand that." Master Norten favored him with a sardonic smile. "I'm not used to being wrong, either, and I hate it like poison when I am."

"So we understand each other." Firesong gingerly took the Master's hand as Elspeth and Darkwind watched, the former with approval, the latter with amusement. "Tomorrow, then?"

"Tomorrow." Master Norten favored Karal with his stiletto glance now. "I trust you'll be there, with nimble fingers and sharp pens? I want notes on everything, even if at the time we think we've gone down a dead end. It might be useful."

Karal sighed. It was going to be a very long day.

"Yes, sir," he promised. That made yet another group he was taking notes for. At this rate, his fingers would be worn to the bone! It was just a good thing he had glass pens now, instead of the old quills or metal; the glass hadn't worn out yet.

Well, I did volunteer. And with luck, maybe Natoli will be impressed with all this diligence. I get the feeling that nothing impresses her quite like competence.

Only after he was well on his way down the corridor, walking next to his master, did he wonder why he'd had that particular thought....

Grand Duke Tremane listened to the tales of woe from his commanders with a blank expression and a churning gut. They had all ridden here—ridden, as if this was some barbarian army rather than the proud Army of the Empire. Most of them hadn't ridden any distance in years, but with all the Gates down—again—there was no other way for them to reach him.

It was very clear to everyone that the Imperial forces were in a state of barely-controlled panic. No sooner did the mages manage to fix all the things that had gone wrong, than another wave of disruption came along and knocked everything magical flat again. There wasn't even time to set up shielding around things! This was the third time, and it was worse than the last two; shields that had held through the first two waves had broken before this third onslaught.

Not one of his commanders cared a bean about gaining more ground in Hardorn anymore. All they wanted was for things to get back to normal! Even the weather-workers were having problems; they couldn't even begin to control the storms and were just trying to keep the worst effects off the camps themselves.

Add to that the panic and the disruption in services of all those terrible storms that dumped purely physical chaos down on the camps, and you had a recipe for disaster if he didn't do something to increase the troops' confidence. Rumors running through the camp right now were enough to cause even hardened campaigners to worry; new recruits were often panicking, and had to be restrained by their more experienced fellows. There were tales that Hardorn had bought the services of the Black Kings in the south, stories that some mage in the Empire itself had caused this by accident, rumors that Valdemar was unleashing the hidden powers of their Heralds and white horses. No one knew, but everyone had a theory. Most of those theories painted a grim picture of the first defeat that the Imperial Army was likely to face in centuries, if Tremane didn't pull some answer out of his sleeve.

The only trouble was, he hadn't the foggiest notion how to do that.

I pledge you a tonne of incense and a gross of candles each, he silently told the forty little gods, if you will just grant me some inspiration on what to do in this situation!

But inspiration and intervention, divine or otherwise, was clearly in short supply at the moment. None of the forty vouchsafed him a reply.

"We have to do something," General Harde said, at last. "No matter what your orders are, you have to order us to do something, or the troops will assume you've lost your nerve and we've lost the situation."

"Consolidate," he said finally. "Everyone pull your men in, and consolidate our forces around this keep. To the coldest hell with the battle plans—I want every soldier right here where we can stay in contact by runners if we have to. With all the men we'll have here, we can build purely physical fortifications. Abandon the front line; the Emperor is hardly in a position to find out what we're doing right now, anyway."

Oh, if only the Empire is suffering the same effects that we are! he prayed. Chaos there will save the situation for me here. Chaos there will convince the Emperor that I am not exaggerating my troubles to cover my own incompetence. And if this is something that Charliss unleashed on me, on his own loyal soldiers—

He did not finish that thought; it would be treason, no two ways about it. He was not ready for treason.

Not yet.

"But what about supplies?" one of the commanders asked. "How are we going to keep such a huge force fed?"

"I don't know yet; I'll have an answer for you when we finally bring them all in," he promised. "I have supplies here for the whole Army for about two weeks before we'd have to go on lean rations. Meanwhile, there are rebels out there, and they are still picking at us; we're better off with all the men in one place, rather than stretched out along a line that reaches across half this benighted country. I don't want to lose any units by having them cut off from me."

That put some spine back in them; with firm orders to carry out, his commanders were a lot more comfortable. And with a march ahead of them, followed by the physical labor of building fortifications, the men should remain tractable until the work ran out.

Better get the engineers to work on designing a wall using only the materials on hand, and mostly hand-labor. And after that, well, if I have to, I'll march the whole damned lot all the way back to Imperial soil, he thought grimly, dismissing his commanders. He turned his attention to the reply to last night's urgent request for information from his tame scholars. He'd literally ordered them out of their beds, and set them to work all night. I may go down in disgrace, but I won't leave these men to be picked off two and three at a time by a pack of barbarians.

At least he'd transported his whole library here before everything went to hell. Somewhere, some time, something like this must have happened in the past. He'd ordered his scholars to abandon their search for information on Valdemar and concentrate on looking for just that. He was, by the gods, going to find out when there were disruptions like this, where they occurred, and most important of all, what the people back then did about it!

My lord; the letter read—the Chief Historian had been impressed enough by the salty language of his order to keep his report concise and omit all the flowerly nonsense usually pasted into such documents. Then again, the Chief Historian was now working without mage-lights, mage-fires, running water, or any of the other comforts he was used to. That alone must have impressed him that the situation was urgent. These disruptions that we are now experiencing were unusual enough that we were able to eliminate most of the texts in your library immediately. I and my three colleagues are familiar with the history of the Empire, and we knew that there would be nothing in the Official Chronicles—which meant that we began our search in the copies of texts we had that predated the foundation of the Empire itself.

Well! Tremane sat back in his chair, taken aback. He knew that the fact that he actually owned copies of pre-Imperial texts was something of a fluke, and due only to his own interest in history. Most people didn't own anything nearly so old; he'd paid a healthy sum in bribes above and beyond the cost of the books to get some of those books, too, and now he was very glad that he had.

First, I must caution you that these texts are a jumble of many archaic tongues, and it is going to take some time to translate them precisely. We have all agreed on the general gist of what we found, however.

Second, the texts themselves are the personal papers of a mixed group of ancient warriors. Some were—we think—mercenaries, and others were liegemen to a Great Lord of some kind.

Well, that certainly fit in with the official history of the Empire. Tremane cupped his chin in his hand and read on.

We have gathered from the papers that this group was part of a much larger force; that they were cut off from the rest when their enemy gained an unexpected and decisive victory. They were warned by their Lord that they must flee as far and as fast as they could, by means of a Gate.

Interesting. That was not part of official history, which stated that the group had marched off on its own to carve out conquest for themselves.

Why they fled, we do not yet know; our guess, and it is only a guess, was that the Great Lord intended his enemy's victory to be an empty one, and meant to ensure his enemy claimed only ashes by destroying everything before he actually took it. Be that as it may, it is clear that they did build a Gate to reach a location they knew was relatively safe, far eastward of the place where they had retreated after being cut off. Then something happened as they were passing through the Gate, and a catastrophe of—we believe—a magical nature, flung them farther away than they had ever intended to go. This landed them in completely unfamiliar territory—territory that became, as you have probably anticipated, the heart of our Empire. In the days that followed, a series of disruptions that one writer terms "magic-quakes" occurred; another writer describes them as "aftershocks." These disruptions seem on first blush to match the kinds of troubles we are experiencing now.

This was exactly what he had been hoping to find! Elation built in him—

—only to be crushed, abruptly, by the words that followed.

You were most urgent in your orders that once we found a match to our circumstances, we should discover what those ancients had done to remedy their situation. I have no good news for you, my Lord. Once again, my colleagues and I are unanimous in our understanding of these papers.

Our ancestors did nothing. They could do nothing. They simply waited for the magic-quakes—or aftershocks—to end, or destroy them. Eventually, of course, the disruptions ended, they consolidated their position, and the rest is official Imperial history.

Tremane buried his face in his hands.

They waited it out. This was not good news.

But I am going to have to deal with it. He was not one to try to pretend that bad news wasn't the truth. If anything, he tended to act as if bad news was only the shadow of worse to come. It would be a good idea to act that way now.

His mages were in a panic; the waves of disruption were growing stronger, not weaker, as each one passed. His instinct to get the Gates up first, and start hauling supplies through them as soon as they were up, had been the right choice. They had supplies enough to last them well into the winter at half rations, now, and if they could just get the Gates back up a few more times, they might get enough to last all the way to spring on full rations.

No. That was the wrong choice—get the supplies, yes, that should be the priority, but why waste time on getting several Gates up, when he only needed one? Just the one to the westernmost Imperial supply depot, the one for foodstuffs. Forget weapons; he wasn't going to allow his men to waste a single arrow until he had decided what his long-term plans should be. Forget reinforcements—he had all the men he needed to hold firm, and too many for an orderly retreat, if it came to that. He would have all his mages concentrate on getting that one single Gate back up, and he would forge the orders he needed to loot the depot, and to the coldest hell with honesty and procedure, and anyone else who might need supplies from it.

It's easier to apologize than get permission. He could make amends to the Emperor later, if he needed to.

At least he knew one thing; it was less likely now that Charliss was actively sending this against him. However, it was still possible that Charliss had known this would happen, and had sent him off on a doomed mission to be rid of him.

And condemned hundreds of thousands of good soldiers with me. That made him angry—the loyalty of the Army to the Emperor was legendary. To have that loyalty betrayed so callously was a betrayal of everything the Empire held sacred.

Which isn't much. When he thought back on the state of the Court, of the corruption deep in the bureaucracy, perhaps he shouldn't be angry or surprised.

He shook his head, It didn't matter. What did matter was that while he was maneuvering to get his army into a defensive position, there was Valdemar, virtually unscathed, poised, and waiting.

If I were the Queen, I'd strike right now. I'd bring in Karse, hit the Imperial lines at a dozen places and break us up into manageable pieces, and then wipe the pieces out at my leisure. I wouldn't hesitate. Just arm the natives, and they'd probably take care of most of it for me. That would give me Hardorn with a minimum of effort—and I might even be able to penetrate into Imperial territory before it got too expensive.

He had to do something to keep Valdemar so busy with its own troubles that it wouldn't have the leisure or the coordination to strike now.

Unfortunately, that meant using a weapon that he'd held in reserve because he hated it so much.

But a man threatened will use anything to stay alive. I am fighting for not only my life, but the lives of my men. I cannot hesitate. I will not hesitate.

He would not entrust this to an aide or a messenger. Instead, he unlocked a drawer of his desk, and removed a square of something heavy wrapped in silk. He laid the square in the middle of his desk and unwrapped it, uncovering a piece of polished black obsidian-glass, perfectly square and perfectly flawless.

This was another reason why all candidates for the Iron Throne should be mages. Some messages were too important for anything but personal delivery.

He reached into the drawer again, and brought out a hand-sized portrait of a man_; it was an excellent likeness, though the man himself was hardly memorable. This was a good thing; it was not wise to employ a man who was distinctive as a covert agent. With the portrait was a lock of the man's hair; the physical link needed to contact him.

It was also the physical link that any decent mage could use to kill him if he became uncooperative, as all agents knew very well. There was nothing like having a little insurance, when one dealt with covert operatives.

Using the portrait, he fixed the agent's image in his mind, and reached for the energies of his own personal reserve of magic. He did not care to trust the lines of power hereabouts; his mages had already warned him that they were depleted and erratic. What these disruptions had done to them, he did not care to speculate. While he relied on his own protected pool of power, he should be immune to the disturbances around him.

He stared into the black glass, emptying his mind of everything except the agent and the need to speak with him, flinging his power out as if it was a fishing line, and he was angling for one fish in particular.

His power slowly drained out as he sought and waited; sought and waited. This might take a while; he was prepared to wait for as long as it took. His agent was not in command of his own movements, and it could be some time before he was free to answer the call. That was fine; a mage must learn patience, first and foremost, before he could build any other skills. A mage must learn concentration, as well, and Tremane had ample practice in both virtues.

The marks crept by and the candle burned down, and at long last, past the hour of midnight, the answer came to his call.

The agent's face formed in the glass, expression anxious and apologetic. Tremane thought, with a curl of his lip, that the fool looked even more ineffectual than he did in his portrait. Why had anyone ever chosen an artist as a covert agent? "My Lord Duke!" the man cried, his lips moving in the glass, his voice as thin and weak as a fly's buzzing whine. "I beg you to forgive me! I could not get away! I—"

"You are wasting my time with apologies," Tremane said curtly. "Here are your orders. Release the little birds."

The agent's face went dead white. "My—my Lord!" he faltered. "All of them! Are you certain!"

"All of them," Tremane ordered, curtly. "See to it."

Before the fool could waste his time and resources further by arguing or pleading that this would place him in danger, Tremane broke the spell. The agent's image vanished from the glass, quickly as a candle flame is blown out. Tremane paused for a moment, massaging his temples, before he folded the silk around the obsidian and put glass, hair, and portrait back into the drawer.

Would the agent survive his appointed task?

He would if he was careful, Tremane decided. There was nothing about the job that left him vulnerable to discovery. The "little birds" should already be in place, and setting them free could be done at a distance. If he was stupid, he might be caught, though.

Then let him suffer the penalty of stupidity, Tremane decided with uncharacteristic impatience. If he is caught, he has done all he need do, and he is expendable.

He was rarely so ruthless with an underling, but this man was no agent of his choosing, and he had not been particularly useful until now.

He clenched his fist for a moment, as a pang of regret for what he had just ordered swept over him. This was—ugly, unclean, and underhanded. It was neither honest nor honorable. It would be the first real stain on his conscience or soul. He had ordered the deaths of men before, but they had always been death in battle or other circumstances where both sides knew what they were getting into. He knew that he would spend at least one sleepless night over this and probably more to come.

This was the death of innocents, noncombatants. Yet an Emperor had to be ruthless enough to order just such an action to save the lives of his own people.

But I had no choice, he told himself, staring up at the black glass of his window, so like the black mirror he had just used. I must save my men. This is war, and I had no choice.

So why did it feel as if he had betrayed, not only his honor, but some significant part of his own soul?