Dedicated to Teresa and Dejah

One

Grand Duke Tremane shivered as a cold draft wisped past the shutters behind him and drifted down the back of his neck. This was a far cry from Emperor Charliss' Crag Castle—which, though outwardly austere, was nevertheless replete with hidden comforts. Even his own ducal manor, while primitive by the standards of Crag Castle, was free of drafts in the worst of weather. Tremane closed his eyes for a moment in longing for his own home as yet another breath of ice insinuated itself past his collar. It felt less like a trickle of cold water and more like the edge of a knife blade laid along his spine.

More like at my throat. That cold breath of air was the merest harbinger of worse, much worse, to come. That was why he had gathered every officer, every mage, and every scholar in his ranks here together, all of them crammed into the largest room his confiscated headquarters afforded.

Who did they say had built this place? A Hardornen Grand Duke at least, as I recall. His own manor boasted many rooms grander than this, and better suited to gathering large groups of men for a serious discussion. The tall windows, though glazed, were as leaky as so many sieves, and he'd been forced to block out the thin gray light of another bleak autumn day by having the shutters fastened down across them; and although fires roared in the fireplaces at either end of the room, the heat went straight up into the rafters two stories above his head, where it was hardly doing anyone any good. In happier times, this wood-paneled, vaulted hall with its floor of chill stone had likely played host to any number of glittering balls and entertainments. The rest of the time it had probably been shut up, given that it was a drafty old barn and impossible to keep at a reasonable temperature. Tremane glanced up at the exposed beams and rafters above him; they were lost in the shadows despite the presence of so many candles and lanterns on the tables that the air trembled and shimmered just above the flickering flames.

The massed candles must be putting out almost as much heat as the fireplaces; too bad none of that heat was reaching him.

Dozens of anxious faces peered up at him. He was seated on a massive chair behind a ridiculously tiny secretary's desk up on the platform where musicians had probably performed. It was uncomfortably like a dais, and he was well aware that such a comparison would not be lost on the Imperial spies in his ranks. Right now, though, that was the least of his concerns. The primary issue here was a simpler one: survival.

He stood up, and the murmur of incidental conversation below him died into silence without the need to clear his throat.

"Forgive me, gentlemen, if I bore you by stating the obvious," he began, concealing his discomfort at addressing so many people at once. He had never been particularly adept at public speaking; it was the one lack he suffered as a commander. No stirring battlefield speeches out of him—he was more apt to clear his throat uneasily, then bark something trite about honor and loyalty and retire in confusion. "Some of you have been involved in other projects at my request, and I want you all to know our current situation as clearly as possible, so that nothing has to be explained twice."

He winced inwardly at the awkwardness of his own words, but there were some nods out in his audience, and no one looked bored yet, so he carried on. Officers formed the bulk of his audience, massed at three long tables in front of him, dark and foreboding in their field uniforms of a dark reddish brown—the color of dried blood. Some wag had once made the claim that the reason the field uniforms were that color was to avoid the expense of removing stains after a battle. As a sample of wit, it had fallen rather flat; taken at face value, it might just have been the truth.

To his right and left, respectively, were his tame scholars and the Imperial mages; the latter in a variation on the field uniforms, looser and more comfortable for middle-aged and spreading bodies. The former, as civilians, wore whatever they wished to, and were the sole spots of brightness here. He addressed his first summation to mages and scholars both, rather than to the officers. "Although the Imperial forces have not met with any active opposition since we pulled in our line and took a fortified position here, we are still in hostile territory. Everything to the west of us was completely unsecured when we broke off all engagements, and I would not vouch for Hardornen land to the south and north of our original wedge. Hostilities could break out at any moment, and we must keep that in mind when making plans."

Grimaces from the scholars and mages, grim agreement from his officers. The Imperial wedge meant to divide the country of Hardorn into two roughly equal parts, to be divided still further and conquered, was now an Imperial arrowhead, broken off from the shaft and lodged somewhere in the middle of Hardorn. And at the moment, he only hoped it was lodged in such a way that it could be ignored by the populace at large.

"We have been cut off completely from Imperial contact ever since the mage-storms worsened," he continued, giving them the most unpleasant news first. "We have not been able to reestablish that contact. I must reluctantly conclude that we are on our own."

There were not many in his ranks who knew that particular fact, and widened eyes and shocked glances told where and how the news hit home. They took it rather well, though; he was proud of them. They were all good men—even the Imperial spies among them.

Are any of them still in contact with their overseers in the empire? I'd give a great deal for the answer to that little question. There was no way of knowing, of course, since anyone who was an agent for Emperor Charliss would be a better mage than he himself was. Charliss was too canny an old wolf not to cover that contingency.

Another draft of cold licked at his neck, and he turned the fur-lined collar of his wool half-cape up in a futile attempt to keep more such drafts away. It was the same dulled red as the uniforms of his men; he wore what they wore. He had a distaste for making a show of himself. Besides, a man in a dress uniform covered with decorations made far too prime a target.

"The mage-corps," he continued, turning to nod at the variously-garbed men seated at the table nearest him, "tell me there is no doubt but that the mage-storms are worsening rather than weakening. As you have probably noticed, they are having an effect on the weather itself, and they will continue to do so. That means more physical storms, and worse ones—" He turned a questioning glance at his mages.

Their spokesman stood up. This was not their chief, Gordun, a thickset and homely man who remained in his seat with his hands locked firmly together on the table in front of him, but rather a withered old specimen who had been Tremane's own mentor, the oldest mage—perhaps the oldest man—in the entire entourage. Sejanes was nobody's fool, and perhaps the mages all felt Tremane would be less likely to vent his wrath upon someone he had studied under. In this, his mages were incorrect. He would never vent his wrath on anyone telling him a harsh truth—only on someone caught in a lie.

Sejanes knew that and looked up at his former pupil with serenity intact. "You may have noticed what seems to us of the Empire to be unseasonable cold, and wondered if we are simply seeing weather that is normal to this clime," the old man said, his reedy voice carrying quite well over the assemblage. "I assure you all, it is not. I have spoken with the local farmers and studied what records are available, and this is possibly the worst season this part of the country has ever encountered. Fall struck hard and early, the autumn storms have been more frequent and harsher, and the frosts deeper. We have made measurements, and we can only conclude that the situation is going to worsen. This is the effect of the mage-storms upon an area that was already unstable, thanks to the depredations of that fool, Ancar. The mage-storms themselves are growing worse as well. Put those things together—and I'd just as soon not have to think about what this winter is going to be like."

Sejanes sat down again, and Gordun stood up; about them, looks of shock were modulating into other emotions. There was remarkably little panic, but also no sign whatsoever of optimism. That, in Tremane's opinion, was just as well. The worse they thought the situation was, the better they would plan.

"We've flat given up on restoring mage-link communications with the Empire," he said bluntly. "There isn't a prayer of matching with them when both of us are drifting—it would be like trying to join the ends of two ribbons in a gale without being able to tie a knot in them." His face was set in an expression of resignation. "Sirs, the honest truth is that your mages are the most useless part of your army right now. We can't do anything that will hold through a storm."

"Just what does that mean, exactly?" someone asked from the back of the room.

Sejanes shrugged. "From now on, you might as well act as if we don't exist. You won't have mage-fires for heat or light now or in the dead of winter, we can't transport so much as a bag of grain nor build a Portal that'll stay up through a single storm. In short, sirs, whatever depends on magic is undependable, and we can't see a time coming when you'll be able to depend on it again."

He sat down abruptly, and before the others could erupt with questions, Tremane took control of the situation again.

"The latest mage-storm passed three days ago," he said. "I have been taking reports since then." He leafed through the papers he had read so often that the words danced before his mind's eye. Give them some good news. "The last of the stragglers from that engagement outside Spangera trickled in right before it passed. Every man's been accounted for, one way or another. The preliminary palisades were finished just as the storm hit, so we are now all behind some kind of wall or other." He let them digest that bit of good news for a moment, as a palliative to all the unpleasant information they'd had until now. The shutters behind him rattled in a sudden gust of wind, and the candles flickered as another draft swept the room. This time it was a puff of warm air that touched him, scented with wax and lamp oil.

Shonar Manor, the locals called this place; he'd chosen well when he'd chosen to make it the place where the Imperial Army would dig in and settle down. This fortified manor he had taken as his own had no one to claim it, or so he had been told; Ancar had seen to that. Whether he'd slaughtered the family, root and branch, or simply seen to it that they were all sent into the front lines of his war with Valdemar, Tremane did not know. Nor did it matter, in truth, except that there would be no inconvenient claimants with backers from the town to show up and cause him trouble. The walled city of Shonar itself could hardly hold a fraction of his men, of course, even if he'd displaced the citizens, which he had no intention of doing. They were much more useful right where they were, forming a fine lot of hostages against the good behavior of their fellows—and in the meantime, providing his men with the amenities of any good-sized town. In fact, they were being treated precisely as if they were Imperial citizens themselves so long as they made no trouble. For their part, after their first alarms settled, they seemed satisfied enough with their lot. Imperial silver and copper spent as well as any other.

From the reports Tremane had gotten since the last mage-storm cleared, it was a good thing for everyone that he did get all his men together before it broke.

"The scouts are reporting a fair amount of damage in the countryside this time," he said, turning over another page without really reading what was written there. "This time it's not just the circles of strange land appearing everywhere. Though we've a fair number of those, and they're bigger, there are fewer of them emerging—but we have something entirely new on our hands." He regarded them all with a grave expression; they looked up at him expectantly. "I'm certain that at one time or another each of you has seen mage-made creatures; perhaps some of the attempts to recreate the war-beasts of the past like gryphons or makaar. It appears that the mage-storms are having a similar changing effect on animals and plants, but with none of the control that there would be with a guiding mind behind the magic."

"Monsters," he heard someone murmur, and he nodded to confirm that unpleasant speculation.

"Monstrous creatures indeed," he acknowledged. "Some of them quite horrifying. So far none of them have posed any sort of threat that a well-trained and well-armed squad could not handle, but let me remind you that this last storm hit us by day. What is relatively simple for men to deal with by day may become a much more serious threat in the dark of night."

What if the animal trapped had been something larger than a bull, or smarter than a sheep? What if it had been an entire herd of something? He sighed, and ran his hand through his thinning hair. "This," he pointed out fairly, "is going to do nothing for morale which, as most of you have reported to me, is at the lowest point any of you have ever seen in an Imperial Army."

He turned over another page. "According to your reports, gentlemen," he continued, nodding in the direction of his officers, "this is also to be laid at the feet of the mage-storms. I have had reports of men being treated by the Healers for nothing more nor less than fear, so terrified that they cannot move or speak—and not all of them are green recruits either." As the officers stirred, perhaps thinking of an attempt to protest or defend themselves, he gazed upon them with what he hoped was a mixture of candor and earnest reassurance. "There is no blame to be placed here, gentlemen. Your men are trained to deal with combat magic, but not with something like this—certainly not with something which is so random in the way it strikes and what it does. There is nothing predictable about these storms; we do not even know when they will wash over us. That is quite enough to make even the most hardened veteran ill-at-ease."

Yes, the one question none of us will ask. What if the mage-storm changes not only beasts, but men?

He smiled a little, and his officers relaxed. "Now, as it happens, this is actually working in our favor. My operatives in unsecured areas tell me that the Hardornens are just as demoralized as our men. Perhaps more so; they are little used to seeing the effects of magic close at hand. And certainly they are not prepared for these misshapen monsters that spring up as a result of the storms. So, on the whole, they have a great deal more to worry about than we do—and that can only be good news for us."

In point of fact, active resistance had evaporated; it had begun to fade even before the last mage-storm had struck. He watched his officers as they calculated for themselves how long it had been since a serious attack had come from the Hardornen "freedom fighters" and relaxed minutely as he saw them relaxing.

"Now—that is the situation as it stands," he concluded, with relief that his speech was over. "Have any of you anything to add?"

Gordun stood. "Following your orders, Your Grace, we are concentrating all our efforts on getting a single Portal up and functioning. It will not remain functional after the next storm, but we believe we can have it for you within a few days, with all of us concentrating on that single task."

May the Thousand Little Gods help us. Gordun by himself could have created and held a Portal before these damned storms started. Will we find ourselves wearing skins and chipping flint arrowheads next?

He nodded, noting the faintly surprised and speculative looks his officers were trading. Did any of them have an inkling of what he was about?

Probably not. On the other hand, that is probably just as well.

Finally, at long last, it was the scholar's turn; he did not even recognize the timid man urged to his feet by the sharp whispers of his fellows, which argued for more bad news.

"W-we regret, Y-your G-grace," the fellow stammered nervously, "there is n-nothing in any r-records to g-give us a hint of a s-solution to the s-storms. W-we l-looked for hidden c-ciphers or other k-keys as you asked, and there was n-nothing of the s-sort."

He didn't so much sit down as collapse into his seat. Tremane sighed ostentatiously, but he did not rebuke the poor fellow in any way. Even if he'd been tempted to—the man couldn't help it if there was nothing to find in the records, after all—he was afraid the poor man would faint dead away if the Grand Duke even looked at him with faint disapproval.

These scholars are hardly a robust lot. Or perhaps it is just that they are neither fish nor fowl—neither ranked with the mages nor bound to the army, and thus have the protections of neither.

Odd. That wasn't anything he would have taken much thought for, in the past. Perhaps because he knew they were on their own, he was taking no man for granted, not even a scholar with weak eyes and weaker muscles.

"Gentlemen," he said, even as those thoughts were running through his head, "now you know the worst. Winter is approaching, and much more swiftly than any of us thought possible." As if to underscore his words, the shutters that had been rattling were hit by a sudden fierce gust that sounded as if they'd been struck by a missile flung from a catapult. "I need your help in planning how we are to meet it when it comes. We need shelter for the men, walls to protect us, not only from the Hardornens, but from whatever the mage-storms may conjure up. We cannot rely on magic—only what our resources, skills, and strength can provide." He cast his eyes over all of them, looking for expressions that seemed out of place, but found nothing immediately obvious. "Your orders are as follows; the engineering corps are to create a plan for a defensive wall that can be constructed in the shortest possible time using army labor and local materials. The rest of you are to inventory the civilian skills of your men and pool those men whose skills can provide us shelter suitable for the worst winter you can imagine. Do not neglect the sanitation in this; we are going to need permanent facilities now, something suitable for a long stay, not just latrine trenches. Besides shelter, we will need some way to warm that shelter and to cook food—if we begin cutting trees for the usual fires, we'll have the forest down to stumps before the winter is half over." Was that enough for them to do? Probably, for now. "You scholars, search for efficient existing shelters, ones that hold heat well, and some fuel source beside wood. If you find anything that looks practical, bring it to my attention. Mages, you have your assignment. Gentlemen, you are dismissed for now."

The men had to wait to file out of the great double doors at the end of the hall, suffering the cold blasts penetrating the hall as one of the shutters broke loose and slapped against the wall. The Grand Duke was not so bound; his escape was right behind the dais, in the form of a smaller door at which his bodyguard waited, and he took it, grateful to be out of that place. The short half-cape did nothing to keep a man warm; he wanted a fire and a hot drink, in that order.

The guard fell in silently behind him as he headed for his own quarters, his thoughts preoccupied with all the things he had not—yet—told his men.

The mages probably guessed part of it. They were not simply cut off, they had been abandoned, left to fend for themselves, like unwanted dogs.

The Emperor, with all the power of all the most powerful mages in the world at his disposal, could (if he was truly determined) overcome the disruptions caused by the mage storms to send some kind of message. Tremane had never heard of a commander being left so in the dark before; certainly it was the first time in his own life that he had no clue what Charliss wanted or did not want of him.

There could be several causes for this silence.

The most innocent was also, in some ways, the most ominous. It was entirely possible that the mage-storms wreaking such havoc here could be having an even worse effect within the Empire itself. The Empire had literally been built on magic; distribution of food depended upon it, and communications, and a hundred more of the things that underpinned and upheld the structure of the Empire itself. If that was the case—

They're in a worse panic than we are here. Civilians have no discipline; as things break down, they'll panic. He was enough of a student of history himself to have some inkling what panicking civilians could do. Rioting, mass fighting, hysteria... in a city, with all those folk packed in together, there would be nothing for it but to declare martial law. Even then, that wouldn't stop the fear or the panic. It would be like putting a cork on a bottle of wine that was still fermenting; sooner or later, something would explode.

Tremane reached the warm solitude of his personal suite, waving to the bodyguard to remain outside. That was no hardship; the corridors provided more shelter from the cold drafts than half of the rooms did. Fortunately, his suite was tightly sealed and altogether cozy. He closed the door to his office with a sigh. No drafts here—he could remove his short winter cloak and finally, in the privacy of his quarters, warm numb fingers and frozen toes at a fire.

The second possibility that had occurred to him was basically a variation on what he, himself, had just ordered. The Emperor could have decreed that literally everything was to be secondary to finding a way for the mages to protect the Empire from these storms. There would be no mages free to try and reopen communications with this lost segment of the army. The Empire itself might be protected, but that might very well be all the mages could manage.

But the Empire would hardly spend such precious resources as Imperial mages on the protection of client-states. No, only the core of the Empire, those parts of it that were so firmly within the borders that only scholars recalled what names they had originally borne, would be given such protection.

Which means, he mused, feeling oddly detached from the entire scenario, that the client states are probably rearming and revolting against Charliss. If the Empire itself is under martial law, all available units of the army have been pulled back into the Empire to enforce it. They won't be spending much time worrying about us.

No, one segment of the Imperial Army, posted off beyond the borders of the farthest-flung Imperial Duchy, was not going to warrant any attention under conditions that drastic.

But no one born and raised in the Imperial Courts was ever going to stop with consideration of the most innocent explanations. Not when paranoia was a survival trait, and innocence its own punishment.

So, let us consider the most paranoid of scenarios. The one in which our enemy is the one person who might be assumed to be our benefactor. It was entirely possible that these mage-storms were nothing new to Emperor Charliss. He could have known all along that they were going, to strike, and where, and when. In fact, it was possible that these storms were a weapon that Charliss was testing on them.

Tremane grew cold with a chill that the fire did nothing to warm.

This could be a new terror-weapon, he thought, following the idea to its logical conclusion, as his muscles grew stiff with suppressed tension. What better weapon than one that disrupts your enemy's ability to work magic, and leaves land and people beaten down but relatively intact?

There was even a "positive" slant to that notion. Perhaps this was a new Imperial weapon that was meant only to act as an aid to them in their far-distant fight, and it simply had a wider field of effect than anyone ever imagined.

But far more likely was the idea that, since no one knew precisely what the weapon was going to do, it was tested out here, in territory not yet pacified, so that any effect on Imperial holdings would be minimal. Tremane and his men were nothing more than convenient methods by which the effectiveness of the weapon could be judged—

Which would mean that they are watching us, scrying us, seeing how we react and what we do, and whether or not the locals have the wit to do the same. This lack of communication was a deliberate attempt to get them to react without orders, just to see what they would do.

If this happened to be the true case, it ran counter to every law and custom that made the Army the loyal weapon that it was. It would be a violation of everything that Imperial soldiers had a right to expect from their Emperor.

For that matter, being left to fend for themselves was almost as drastic a violation of that credo.

In either case, however, this would not be above what could be done to test a candidate for the Iron Throne. Other would-be heirs had been put through similar hardships before.

But not, his conscience whispered, their men with them.

That was what made him angry. He did not mind so much for himself; he had expected to be tested to the breaking point. It was that the Emperor had included his unwitting men in the testing.

There was no denying that, for whatever reason, Charliss had abandoned them. There had been time and more than time enough for him to have sent them orders via a physical messenger. This silence was wrong, and it meant that there was something more going on than appeared on the surface. It was the Emperor's sworn duty to see to the welfare of his soldiers in times of crisis, as it was their sworn duty to protect him from his enemies. They had kept their side of the bargain; he had reneged on his.

It would not be long before the rest of the army knew it, too. In a situation like this, they all were aware they should have been recalled long ago. Since there was no way that a Portal could be brought up that was large enough to bring them all home, Charliss should have sent in more troops to provide a corridor of safety so that they could march home. And he should have done all this the moment the mage storms began, when it became obvious that they were getting worse. Then they would not only have been safely inside the Empire by now, they would have been on hand to deal with internal turmoil. That meant a kind of double betrayal, for somewhere, someone was going shorthanded, lacking the troops he needed to keep the peace because the Emperor had decided to abandon them here.

Or rather, it was more likely that he had opted to abandon Tremane and, with him, his men. He had probably written Tremane off as the potential heir because he had not achieved a swift victory over Hardorn, and had chosen this as the most convenient way to be rid of him.

And if I cannot contrive a way to bring us all safely through the winter, they will suffer with me.

That was the whole point of his anger. He had been schooled and trained as an Imperial officer; he had been an officer before he ever became a Grand Duke. This callous abandonment was counter to both the spirit and the letter of the law, and it made Tremane's blood boil. It represented a betrayal so profound and yet so unique to the Empire that he doubted anyone born outside the Empire would ever understand it, or why it made his skin flush with rage.

The men would certainly understand it, though, when they finally deduced the truth for themselves and then worked through their natural impulse to assume that anything so wrong could not be true. And at that point—

At that point they will cease to be soldiers of the Empire. No, that's not true. They will be soldiers of the Empire, but they will cease to serve Charliss.

He sat down in the nearest chair, all in a heap, as the magnitude of that realization struck him. Revolt—it had not happened more than a handful of times in the entire history of the Empire, and only once had the revolt been against an Emperor.

Was he ready to contemplate revolt? Unless he did something drastically wrong, it was to him that the men would turn if they revolted against Charliss. Was he prepared to go along with that, to take command of them, not as a military leader, but as the leader of a revolt?

Not yet. Not... yet. He was close, very close, but not yet prepared to take such drastic action.

He shook his head and ordered his thoughts. I must keep my initial goals very clearly in mind. I must not let anything distract me from them until the men are secured to face this coming winter. That is my duty, and what the Emperor has or has not done has no bearing on it. He set his chin stubbornly. And to the deepest hells with anyone who happens to get in my way while I am seeing to that duty!

He rose and went directly to his desk. The best way to ensure total cooperation among the men was to make things seem as normal as possible. So—to keep them from thinking too much about the silence from the Empire, he should keep up military discipline and structure the changes he planned to make to the military pattern.

He wrote his officers' orders quickly but carefully. He had already recruited a half-dozen literate subalterns to serve as scribes and secretaries since it was no longer possible to replicate written orders magically—and they would have to be able to read his handwriting in order to copy it. Now he was grateful for the "primitive" but effective and purely mechanical amenities of this manor. Nothing here had been affected by the storms. His lights still burned; his fires still heated. His cooked food arrived at the proper intervals from the kitchen. The jakes performed their function, and the sewage tunnels carried away the result without stinking up the manor. Somehow he was going to have to find men who could manage these same "primitive" solutions for an entire army.

We need men who don't need magic to get things done. Leather workers, blacksmiths—farmers, even—break all the work of running the camp down into what is and isn't done by magic, then scour the ranks for those who know how to do those jobs with ordinary labor. Now, how to see to it that these men were given the appropriate recognition so that they would volunteer their abilities...? Well, that was a simple problem to solve. Promote them to "specialist" rank, with the increase in pay grade. There was nothing like an increase in pay to guarantee enthusiastic cooperation.

He put the cool, blunt end of his glass pen to his lips for a moment, and felt his lips taking on a wry twist. Money. There isn't much in the coffers at the moment. Well, that makes the plan that much more important. Money was the other constant in the Imperial Army, and had been, from time immemorial. Small wonder, given that our history claims we began as a band of mercenaries. Regular pay was the foundation of loyalty when it came to the individual Imperial fighter. Troops had been known to rise up and murder Commanders who shorted their pay; an Emperor had been dethroned for failing to pay the army on time and another had been put in his place because he had made up pay and even bonuses for the men directly under his command out of his own pocket.

Of course, there had never been a situation like this one, with troops abandoned so far from home, and cut off from all supplies. Under circumstances like this one, his men might be understanding... or they might not. It was best to be sure of them for now.

He sanded the inked orders and took them to the door of his quarters, where one of his bodyguards took them away to the corps of secretaries to be copied and distributed.

"I do not want to be disturbed under any circumstances," he told the guard, who nodded and saluted, and when he went back into his room and closed the door, he also locked it. The guard would think nothing amiss in this. Locking his door was nothing new; he often required privacy to think and plan. There was no one of higher rank here to question that "need" for absolute privacy.

This time, however, he needed privacy to act, not to think. And it was just as well that he had made a habit of privacy. No one would know what he did here, tonight.

Thanks to the Little God of Lust that my aunt was his devotee. If it had not been for his aunt, and her own need for secrecy.... He sat down at his traveling desk and reached beneath it, straining a little to touch the spot behind the drawer that held his pens, ink, and drying sand. The place he needed to reach lay just past the right-hand corner of that drawer...

He felt the tiny square of wood sink as he depressed it, and he quickly removed the pen drawer, taking it out of the desk and placing it on top, out of the way. His aunt had been a woman who was very protective of her secrets—and absolutely ruthless in that protection. If he had removed the drawer first, pressing the key-spot on the bottom of the desk would have resulted in a poisoned needle through the fingertip. Within an hour, he would have been dead. The poison on that needle was known to persist in potency for two hundred years, and as for the mechanism, he was certain it would outlive him. He reached into the cavity that had held the drawer and felt for a similar spot in the back of the cavity and on the right-hand side.

Another square of wood sank beneath his questing finger, and he moved his hand to the left side of the cavity. In this case, had he not removed his hand immediately but continued to press at the spot, it would have triggered a second mechanism, and the secret drawer he was trying to free would have locked into place. Unless you knew the way to reset it, nothing short of hacking the desk to pieces would allow one to reach that hidden drawer.

That second drawer, the secret one, half the height of the original, had slid a bare fraction out of the back of the cavity. He pried it completely out, touching only the top edge, and brought it out of its hiding place into the candlelight. It, too, was trapped; this time with a slow-acting contact poison that was a natural component of the wood forming the bottom. He was very careful not to touch the bottom, only the sides. The inside was lined with slate to insulate what it held from the poisonous wood.

All of this was quite necessary, for within this drawer was an object that meant death without trial if it was ever found in his possession. Or rather, it had meant a death sentence. Now, well—unless there was an Imperial spy in his army with the rank and authorization to carry such a sentence out, it was—

It is less likely. I will never say "unlikely" when it comes to the power of the Emperor.

More precious than gold, more magical than jewels, more potent than drugs. It was the pure, crystallized essence of power. He took it from its nest of silk with hands that were remarkably steady, given the deadly danger it represented.

It was a completely accurate copy of the Imperial Seal, identical in every way, mundane and magical, with the original. It had been obtained at incredible risk—although the actual cost had been minimal, for he had made the copy himself. He could never have bought this; there was not enough money in the world to pay a mage to make this, and not enough to bribe an Imperial secretary to let it out of his keeping long enough to make that copy.

He set it carefully on the desktop, and the memory of the first time he had placed it on this very desk overlaid itself on the present.

To this day, it was the single most daring act he had ever accomplished. He was still not entirely certain what had possessed him to even contemplate such a mad action. Although he had not known it at the time, it was Emperor Charliss' policy to assign each of the potential candidates for the Throne to a stint within the Imperial Secretariat, so that they would know what the duties of their underlings were—and where the opportunities for bribery and espionage among those underlings lay. During his tour of duty, the Imperial Seal had come into his hands for two entire days, as he followed Charliss on a Royal Progress through newly conquered lands. Charliss had been preoccupied with the machinations of a local satrap and had immersed himself in dealing with his twisted and involved plots to defraud Emperor and Empire of their rightful portions and authority. He'd sensed possible treachery, and had entrusted the Seal to Tremane while he dealt—personally and magically—with the "problem." He'd had no other thoughts on his mind, and it might have been that he had forgotten that Tremane was a mage.

But Tremane's skill, while not the equal of the Emperor's, was still sufficient to copy the Seal. By sheerest accident, he'd had the time, the materials, and the Seal itself, all at once, all readily at hand. The temptation had been too great; he'd bent to it and had made the Seal during one long, feverish night of work.

Once he had made it, however, he had almost destroyed it in panic. Only one thing had prevented him from doing just that: the existence of this desk.

He'd inherited it from an aunt with numerous lovers—many of them dangerous to know, all of them married to other women. She'd had the drawer built to conceal missives too hazardous to keep, but too precious—emotionally or with an eye to later blackmail—to burn. It was the only place remotely safe enough to hold something as risky as a copy of the Imperial Seal.

Since that time, the desk and its burdensome secret had always traveled with him. He had used it only once, just to be certain that it was identical in every way to the original, and then only to seal a document the Emperor had already approved and signed, one of an entire stack of similar documents that Charliss had signed and sealed without glancing more than once at each.

Now, however, Tremane was about to forge a document that the Emperor would definitely never approve of.

On the other hand, in order to reach him to bring him to justice, once the deception was discovered, the Emperor was going to have to come to him. Or, at least, his minions were.

That was hardly going to be an easy proposition, all things considered. There was a great deal of disturbed and hostile territory between him and the Emperor.

It was also going to be some time before Tremane was found out, and during that time conditions were only going to worsen, which would further protect him from Imperial wrath.

Besides all that, there was no telling if Charliss could manage to track Tremane down in the first place, much less put through a Portal to haul him back for justice—or send troops across the unsettled countryside of Hardorn to accomplish the same goal.

In either case, he would prove he could reach them—and there would be questions about why he had not evacuated the troops if he could pursue Tremane to bring him to book for his actions. Charliss would have no excuse not to bring back the rest of the army as well as the errant Grand Duke.

If he does come after me, I would just as soon it were an overland trek. I have a notion that I could manage to escape from custody during a mage-storm if I put my mind to it. He shook his head again; he was allowing himself to be distracted by speculations. He must keep his mind on his immediate goals.

Especially since he was going to need intense concentration and a very steady hand for the next few hours.

He wrapped a scarf around his forehead to keep sweat out of his eyes; not that he was too warm, but he knew from past experience that he was going to be sweating from nervousness. He had to be able to see clearly, and he didn't want any drops falling on his pages either; Imperial scribes did not sweat over their work. Setting aside the secret drawer and the pen drawer, he selected a new glass pen and picked out one very special bottle of ink. While this bottle was not going to land him in any trouble, it might have caused some raised eyebrows if anyone had known that Grand Duke Tremane possessed a bottle of the special ink used for official Imperial documents, ink made with tiny, glittering flecks of silver and gold in it, to mark the letters as coming unmistakably from the hand of an Imperial scribe.

First, though, he took out a piece of paper and a silver point pencil, and worked out the exact wording of the document he intended to forge.

It wasn't terribly elaborate—but it wasn't every day that someone came to an Imperial storage depot, authorized to empty it and the Imperial pay coffers of every scrap, bit of grain, and copper coin. The wording had to be such that it would cause no one to question it during the time he and his men were there.

This was the plan. He had one chance to ensure the survival of all of his men this winter—if the storage depot was fully stocked, as he expected it to be, there would be enough supplies there to see them all through, not only until spring, but possibly even well into summer. If the coffers were full, the men could be paid for long enough that he would have the time to win their personal loyalty. Even if there was no place for the soldiers to spend the money locally, their morale would be buttressed simply by having it to spend later. So now it was time.

This was the Portal he had targeted for reopening, the one leading to the storage depot lying nearest them. Fortunately, it was in his duchy, and he'd had to fight the temptation to use it to flee homeward, leaving his men to loot the depot and then fend for themselves. But his duty lay here; his duchy was in good hands, and there was no one there he had any real emotional ties to. And frankly, when his raid was complete, he would be much safer here than there. Here was a known quantity. The mage-storms may have left his home duchy a chaotic wreck, and holding a Portal open long enough to move more than just a raiding party through could be impossible.

This was a small Portal, able to a take only a few men at a time, and the mages doubted that they would be able to hold it open for more than a few hours. He would not be able to use it to bring more than a scant fraction of the troops home—but he could use it to bring everything they needed back here.

He had a select group of experienced and trusted men from his personal guard ready to move the moment he alerted them. They were all huge; as his bodyguards, they towered over him. Before joining his guard, they had all worked as stevedores or in similar occupations. The Portal wasn't even large enough to admit anything bigger than a donkey; what they brought out would have to be moved with the help of those tiny beasts of burden and their own muscles.

Once he had the wording worked out, he dipped his pen carefully in the special ink, and began tracing the glittering letters on the snow-white vellum.

The very act of writing with such ink on such a surface brought back more memories—of overseeing the Imperial scribes, of writing such documents himself during a brief stint as an Imperial scribe, when he had been brought to court by his father at the age of sixteen.

All the discipline drilled into him at that time came back, steadying his hand, and sending his breathing into the calming patterns that enabled the scribes to work, bent over their desks, in a state of meditative concentration for hours at a time. This did not, however, keep him from making mistakes.

An Imperial document would be flawless. There would be no mistakes, no blots, no misspelled words. He could not permit the tiniest discrepancy between this document and the genuine ones that would have been presented ever since the depot opened.

He made and destroyed half a dozen copies before he had a perfect one. As he waited for the ink to dry, he threw the rest, and his faint original of the wording, into the fire. He watched them burn, making sure that they were all reduced to ashes before turning back to the next and most difficult part of his forgeries.

Ordinary red sealing wax would become something extraordinary before he was through with it.

He lit the tip of the brittle, gold-dust impregnated wax at his candle and dripped it carefully onto the vellum, at the very base of the document. While it was still hot and viscous, he pressed the Seal into it, and mentally twisted the energies about the Seal and the wax together, activating it. The metal of the Seal grew warm in his hand, and the wax beneath it glowed, first white, then yellow, then the red of iron in a fire.

Carefully, he raised the Seal from the vellum as the glow faded.

Impressed into the wax was something that deceived the eyes, but not the touch. His fingers told him that the wax impression was a sketchy bas-relief, but his eyes told him quite a different story.

What he saw was the Wolf Crown, rising out of the wax of the seal as if made from that wax, scintillating with gold dust and a hint of rainbow. Was it an illusion? Not exactly. Nor was it exactly reality. It lay somewhere in between the two.

He laid the Seal back in the drawer and sat where he was, catching himself with both hands on the desk as he went momentarily giddy with exhaustion.

He had not expected that, and it took him completely by surprise. Was it the effect of the mage-storms, or only that he was much older, and under much more strain, than he had been the last time he'd used the Seal? There was no way to tell.

And it didn't matter. If he was lucky, he would never have to use it again.

If I am wise, I will never use it again!

Nevertheless, luck and wisdom had very little to do with the traps Fate might hold for him. He put the Seal back into its hiding place, and put his forgery in with several other, perfectly genuine "contingency" documents that the Emperor had supplied him with when he traveled out here. No one knew exactly what documents he had, nor how many of them there were. When he took this one out of the stack, there would be no way that anyone could say that this one had not been among them originally.

He rested a while after that; no point in unlocking the door directly; someone might sense that magic had been at work here, and he wanted to wait for those energies to fade. Besides, it gave him a badly-needed chance to rest.

Only when the last of those energies had dissipated past his ability to detect them did he rise, unlock the door, and tell his bodyguards to summon his escort.

While there was still daylight left, it was time to make one of his periodic rounds of inspection, and survey his small and desperate kingdom.

Tremane never walked out of his personal stronghold without an escort of half a dozen strong, superbly-trained bodyguards. Of course, at least one of these men was in the pay of the Emperor. He didn't let it bother him, but rather set himself to winning, if not their complete loyalty, then at least a moment's hesitation when the time came for them to raise the assassination knives. That was his best defense against Imperial agents among those he was required to trust.

As he had told his generals, the preliminary defensive wall, a wood-and-daub palisade, had just been completed a few days ago. This palisade contained not only the Imperial camp, but the entire town within its protection. The local populace was quite happy to have them here now, although they had not been too pleased to see them at first. A few attempted incursions by what creatures the mage-storms had left behind had shown them that they could not possibly defend themselves against these weirdling beasts, so bizarre and unpredictable.

The palisade had been easy enough to construct; dead trees had provided the framework, which was filled in with wickerwork and then covered with a particular mix of mud that hardened to a rocklike state when dried. The wall was about a hand's breadth thick, and able to withstand a certain amount of punishment in the way of direct mass impact. It was enough to keep out "dumb" beasts, but Tremane was not about to take the chance that it would have to stand up to more than that. If conditions in the area outside the palisade worsened, there could be mobs of people roaming the countryside, looking for loot, food, or shelter. Tremane was not about to risk the lives of his men against a mob when a well-made wall would take all the risk out of the situation.

Nor were unruly mobs the only possible danger. The war monsters of ancient legend had been able to take down simple palisades—or go over them—and those war-monsters had been created by magic. With more magic loosed in the land, it was possible that chance could recreate something like them. While it was still possible to build before real winter struck, his men were building; building a real wall, one that was constructed of sturdier, and less flammable, materials.

Normally they would have erected a second palisade of wooden tree trunks behind the wicker-and-daub construction, but the sheer size of the camp and the fact that the town was part of the camp made that notion prohibitive. He did not want to denude the countryside of trees, which was what such a palisade would require.

However, there was an abundance of limestone and other materials for making cement, so that was precisely what his walls were being made with. In one huge shelter the men cast molded bricks of cement and put them aside to dry and cure. When they were ready, they were taken to the perimeter for the next step.

Two brick walls were under construction there, behind the "protection" of the wickerwork wall. Construction proceeded in stages, with a team of men devoted to each section of the new wall. When the two brick walls were much taller than the tallest man in the ranks, rubble and earth were packed down between them, and a brick "cap" built over the rubble filling.

It would take an organized force to get over that, but Tremane wasn't done with his project even then. He planned for a curtain wall to be built on top of that, giving his men a protected walkway to use to patrol the perimeter, a protection only real siege engines could breech. Emotionally, he would have liked for the walls to be taller, but practicality told him that there was no real need for them to be that tall. No mere beast, however twisted by magic, could possibly come over the single-story wall—and if anything else came at them, it would be the men and their weapons that kept it back, not a wall.

Still, he found the three-story wall around his confiscated manor very comforting, and he would have liked for that same comfort to be shared by his troops.

Four out of every five of the men were working on the walls, and even with the wretched weather they had been enduring, they were making good progress. There was certainly no shortage of hands for what would ordinarily have been a very labor-intensive job. He'd broken up the long stretch into a hundred sections so that each team of men could see real progress being made. It gave them heart, gave them a reasonable goal to reach.

He took a tour of the brickworks, then went out to where the men were laying a course of bricks. Those who were real masons supervised the trickier bits; the rest laid bricks and spread mortar, bending to the work as if they, too, realized they might be grateful for such protection before long.

But even if Tremane had not personally felt a need for this wall, he would have had the men out doing something constructive. The best way to keep them from getting into trouble was to keep them busy—too busy to make up rumors and spread them, too busy to think of anything other than the good, hot meal waiting for them at the end of the day, and the warm bed to follow that.

The duties varied, and the men were rotated out through all of them unless their skills were particularly needed on one specific job. Those not actually laying bricks or making them were cutting stone, building molds, crushing stone, carrying bricks, or mixing cement and mortar.

And when the wall was complete—which looked to be sooner than he had hoped, for the men worked with a will and a speed he had not expected—he would put them to building winter quarters as soon as the design was determined. That could not come soon enough, and he hoped that somewhere among all of the books he had dragged with him on this journey there would be a design. Something that could concentrate and hold heat, something to take a winter a hundred times worse than any he had endured. He had to plan for the worst, then assume that his imagination was not up to the reality and add to his plans.

Perhaps—I wonder if I can't build the kitchens onto the barracks, and use the waste heat from the ovens and stoves to heat the barracks....

The thin, gray light filtering through the clouds made everything look faded and washed out, as if all the life had been leeched out of the world. Although there was no wind, the air was chilly and damp, and he was glad of his uniform cape.

There was a certain nervousness in the way the men moved, nervousness that had nothing to do with the inspection. Perhaps rumors were spreading about the newest monstrous creatures showing up in the countryside. If that happened to be the case—the men could be even more eager to see the wall completed than their commander was! I would not be unhappy if they acquired a sense of urgency on their own. Fear is a powerful motivator, and the more motivation they have, the faster the walls will go up.

He made a point of watching the men work at each section and complimenting the team leaders on their effort. At least the Hardornen rebels were no longer a factor. Where they had gone, Tremane had no firm answer, but he had some guesses and one of them was probably very close to being correct.

The rebels were, in the main, Hardornen farmers; the rest were young hotheads playing at being virtuous heroes. The former had crops to get in, and the latter were not numerous enough to make a head-on attack on a fortified town.

That was his optimistic guess. His pessimistic projection was far different, and he could not even begin to guess how probable it was.

There might be something out there that had eluded his own patrols; something that was concentrating on the Hardornens, who were not as well armed or armored, and not as accustomed to fighting eldritch creatures as the Imperial forces were. The Imperials were ensconced in one place, behind a wall; the Hardornen rebels had been in concealed camps scattered everywhere. It would be much easier for a clever, powerful creature to take men in a series of scattered camps than to pry the Imperials out of their protections.

On one hand, even the pessimistic guess allowed for a certain relief. If mage-warped creatures were out there picking off the Hardornens, then neither the Hardornens nor the monsters were attacking his men. But if that was the case and it was not simply that now that the Imperials were bottled up in one place, soldiering farmers had gone back to their farms, then sooner or later Tremane and his men would have to deal with whatever it was that was giving the natives trouble.

He hoped the reason for their current state of "peace" was just the harvest and the coming winter. He truly did. One thing that his scholars had managed to unearth was a series of chronicles and fragmentary tales from something called the "Mage-Wars." He did not want to have to face some of the creatures described in those faded pages. Even the names were ominous—makaar, cold-drakes, basilisks....

Perhaps some of those stories, which had thoroughly rattled his scholars, had leaked out to the men. That would account for the nervous haste—and yet the careful attention to detail—with which the wall was going up.

Try not to think of it for now. Wait until you have a chance to talk to those scholars. Perhaps there are physical defenses against those creatures suggested in the chronicles.

He only hoped that the defenses did not prove to be chimeras. Any defense that required more magic would be useless.

He completed his inspection and moved on to the troops on active patrol duty. There were always patrols coming in and out through the newly-constructed east gate; in spite of the fact that the walls were not yet up, he wanted them to be in the habit of coming and going by that route.

He was just in time to see one of his speculations made flesh.

Shouting and excited cries at the gate in one of the completed portions of the wall drew everyone's attention. Men ran toward the gates, where the shouting took on a tone of alarm; more men dropped their tools and ran to see what the matter was.

Tremane did not hasten his pace, however. The alarm trumpets had not sounded, so whatever it was that was causing the uproar, it was not an attack, and it would wait until he got there. The Commander did not, must not run, unless there was an attack in progress. No matter how he felt personally, he must maintain the dignity of his position, must show through his calm that he was in command of every situation. Panic, and even the appearance of panic, was contagious.

Now the gate, which had been standing open, darkened with a rush of people, both uniformed Imperial soldiers and civilians. At first, it only appeared that one of his patrols had run into some hostile farmers, but when he arrived at the gate itself, it was just in time to see stretcher bearers carrying away three badly-wounded men, and the too-quiet, covered forms of two dead.

The civilians were not under guard; it appeared that whatever had injured and killed, it had struck his men and the civilians indiscriminately.

Could it be that his worst guess was the correct one?

Heart in mouth, he looked for someone to interrogate, but the leader of the scouts found him first. "Commander, sir!" the man said, appearing right under his nose, snapping to attention and saluting smartly. "Reporting an encounter, sir!"

Tremane returned the salute just as crisply. "Report, scout leader."

By this time a cart drawn by a pair of sweating, nervous ponies had come into the compound through the gate, where a crowd of onlookers had gathered to await it. There was a tarpaulin draped over the back of it, hiding whatever it held. Someone unhitched the ponies and led them away before they bolted, which they threatened to do at any moment. Whatever was under the tarpaulin had them in a state of near-hysteria.

"We were on patrol, just past the ford across Holka Creek, when we heard shouting," the scout leader said. This was not a man Tremane knew personally; he fit the mold of the semi-anonymous Imperial officer candidates, so nondescript that they could all have been brothers of a particularly undistinguished house. Everything about them was average height, weight, appearance. Except, of course, for their intelligence, which was much, much better than average, and their ability to apply what they learned, which was quite exceptional. The young officer continued, his words crisp and precise. "We investigated, and we found six of the locals defending against that—"

"That" was revealed as the men pulled the tarpaulin off the cart, showing that it was filled with a creature so bizarre that he would never have believed a description. In general it was spiderlike; hairy with a round thorax, a rust-brown in color. It had far too many razor-taloned limbs, no discernible head, and a lumpy body which had been liberally feathered with arrows.

"It had already killed two horses and three men; a couple more of ours charged in before I could stop them and were wounded," the scout leader continued. "I ordered a withdrawal into safer range, then we kept hitting it with arrows until it dropped over."

"Good work," Tremane commended absently, unable to take his eyes off the monstrosity in the cart. Had it been a spider? If so, how did it get so large so fast? And if not, what had it been?

"Have any of the locals ever seen anything like this?" he questioned the scout leader, as they circled the cart, examining the dead beast. It stank, smelling vaguely of musk and stale sweat. No wonder the ponies had been afraid of it; the scent alone would have driven them half crazy. The rust brown limbs were also furred, but thinly.

The scout shook his head. "No, Commander, it was as new to them as it was to us. They're very grateful to us, by the way."

So here it is; something deadly the mage-storms conjured up. Exactly what I was afraid of. Are there more of these things? I hope not.

"Take it to the scholars," he ordered. "Perhaps they can make something of it. And send word to the town, as well; there might be a priest or someone else who can identify what it is—or was."

The scout leader saluted and marched off to attend to his orders. Tremane turned away from the bizarre scene and headed for the main camp site. He still had an inspection to complete.

He walked along the rows of tents, surrounded by his guards; the few men in camp left off what they were doing and jumped to their feet, saluting smartly as he came in view. The tents were closer together than was usual in an open camp, arranged in neat rows, with the ground between kept immaculately cleaned. He noted a number of makeshift ways to keep warm already cropping up; straw or hay mattresses under the sleeping rolls, quilts made of two blankets with more hay stuffed in between. Canvas tents were no real protection against the cold; they barely screened against the wind. The more money a man had, the more blankets he'd bought, but that was no kind of solution.

The tents, despite their makeshift contents, were up to an inspection; he nodded his approval to the officer in charge and moved on.

He completed his inspection with the latrines—which had already been replaced with an efficient, if involved, system that sifted and dried the waste and turned it into grain-sized dry granules which were eagerly sought after by the local farmers for fertilizer. He didn't ask how it worked; he had a similar system on his own estate, and he had never wanted to know how it worked, either.

There are some things a man is not meant to know.

At least they wouldn't need to worry about their water supply being contaminated. He did not want to think about a plague of dysentery in the dead of winter. If even half the men survived something of that nature, he'd count himself lucky.

But as he turned his steps toward his headquarters, he found himself thinking about his estate, and his people, and wondering how they were faring. Were things better there than here? Could they be worse?

Absently, he returned the salutes of the men that he passed. He had been trying to keep thoughts of his home out of his mind, but they kept intruding.

At least I have no Duchess to worry about. For once, prudence has paid a dividend in having one less person to fret over.

Marriage had not seemed particularly wise once he became a candidate for the Iron Throne. He had not dared to marry for affection; his wife would have become nothing more than a target, a way to manipulate him, and he would put no woman he cared for through that kind of experience. He would not wed for pure expediency; his wife might well have been set upon him as a spy, or be in and of herself an attempt to manipulate him. He had kept all of his affairs strictly commercial, choosing comely and willing women from those on his estate, and setting them up with the husbands of their choice and a proper dowry after both of them tired of the situation. It satisfied the needs of the body, if not the heart, and he took care that there were no children to complicate the issue.

So although he had great affection for the land and the people of his estate taken as a whole, he had no particular concern for any single person on that estate. He felt warm fondness, in the way that a young man might have fondness for a favorite horse or dog, but nothing more passionate. He had always felt that the love of his heart was somewhere out there, distant, untouched. Gaining emotional attachment for his immediate surroundings... well, he hadn't deemed it to be of strategic advantage in the development of a Grand Duke or a potential Emperor. Prudence dictated that one should never extend himself past his ability to predict outcomes.

It was altogether fortunate, given the effect of these mage-storms, that his family had maintained a tradition of conservatism where the management of the estate was concerned.

People called us old-fashioned and sometimes laughed at us, but we'd never depended on magic to run the estate. Water was pumped by hand or by windmills, water mills ground the grain, transportation was by well-maintained roads, using horses and mules, ridden or driven. So of all of the lands claimed by the Empire, Tremane's duchy was probably one of those that was better off than most at the moment.

As for Kedrick, he's young, but he's sound, or I wouldn't have left him in charge in the first place. His current heir, a young cousin, was as well-schooled in the management of the estate as Tremane could manage before he left. Now he had plenty of incentive to do the job right; if he failed, he'd starve right along with the others.

I did everything I could for them. It will have to be enough. I certainly can't manage anything more at the moment.

Though if he could get back, with the troops, the duchy could certainly support that many more mouths to feed. It would be impossible to pry him out of his little kingdom with his own private army. That might be a thought to tuck away, for later consideration.

And as I recall, there was a scarcity of eligible young men round about there. It wouldn't be a bad thing, to tie the men to me by marriage....

Once back at the manor house, he dismissed four of the men and went on to his rooms with his usual two trailing along behind him. He stopped at the office where his chief aide sat behind a desk laden with lists. Young Cherin looked up at Tremane's footstep; the aide could easily have been the older sibling of the scout leader. Brown hair, brown eyes, sun-browned skin, square and unremarkable face; he was neither ugly nor handsome, but at least Tremane did remember his name, which had not been the case with his last aide. The poor boy had been so self-effacing that Tremane often forgot he was in the same room. He was so good at being inconspicuous that Tremane eventually sent him off to his spymaster for special training.

"Have you any reports for me?" he asked as the young man looked up, then jumped to his feet with a crisp salute.

"No, Commander," was the prompt reply. Tremane sighed; he'd hoped that at least one of his people would have some ideas for meeting the coming winter. But perhaps he was asking too much, too fast.

"Carry on, then," he replied automatically. The youngster saluted again and returned to his work; lacking anything else constructive to do, Tremane went back to his own suite to sit at his desk and leaf through the old reports listlessly.

A word caught his eye; Valdemar. It was nothing much; just a report that the Valdemarans had been working frantically on a way to block out the mage-storms themselves.

He hadn't thought much about the report at the time he'd first read it, but now as he reread it, he began to wonder about some of his earlier assumptions.

I was so certain that they were the source of the storms, he mused, staring at the fire in his small fireplace and listening with half an ear to the sounds of his men drilling in the courtyard below his office window. He found that sound rather comforting in its ordinary familiarity. I was so certain that this was some strange new weapon that Valdemar had unleashed upon us. But according to this, they have been suffering as badly as we have. Their Queen doesn't have the reputation for being ruthless that Charliss has. So would she turn something like this loose on her own people just to eliminate us?

She might, of course. just because Selenay did not have a reputation for being ruthless, it didn't follow that she was not ruthless. She might simply be a very good actress. She could be mad, too; that was hardly a novelty among royalty.

What was more, Valdemar did not depend on magic for anything. It didn't even have magic as Tremane knew the art. So the only hardships that Valdemar was suffering were those caused by the storms interacting with the physical world—

But there, his reasoning broke down, as he thought about the creature his men had brought in. Only? Not a good choice of words. There was nothing "only" about that monster.

And as a counter to the rest of his arguments, there was the entirely random nature of the storms and their effect. Why would anyone who was sane—and he had seen no reason to think that Queen Selenay was insane—unleash something whose effects were so completely unpredictable? If you had a weapon and you knew what it did, of course, you used it. But if you had a weapon and you had no idea what it was going to do—well, there was no sane reason to use it, not when it could harm you as badly as it harmed your enemies.

Now his head hurt, and he rubbed his temples with the heels of his hands. He hadn't liked sending that assassin in to destroy the alliance Valdemar was making. Something had told him at the time that he might be making a mistake, but he had persisted in order to make the mage-storms stop.

But they didn't stop, did they? In fact, they got worse.

Could he have made a major error in judgment? Granted, the alliance hadn't been disrupted, but at least one of the more important mages had been eliminated. Since the storms hadn't started until after that Karsite priest had arrived in Valdemar, it made sense that he was one of the prime forces behind the mage-storms, if they were indeed originating from Valdemar. With him gone, they should have stopped.

What if Valdemar was not perpetrator, but fellow victim?

His head hurt worse than before. If he'd had better spies—but he didn't. He'd done his best to break up the alliance with Karse, and it hadn't happened. He'd tried to scatter them, leaving them as disorganized as a covey of quail scattered by a beater. But they weren't disorganized, and his assassin hadn't even made an appreciable difference in their level of efficiency. Furthermore, and this was the important point, the mage-storms continued, increasing in frequency and in power.

So what if I was wrong?

He brooded on that for a while, feeling sicker and sicker the longer he thought about it. If that was the case, he had ordered the assassinations of people who could have been his allies against the storms.

Nothing like burning your bridges before you reached them.

I haven't heard from the assassin, and that fool of an artist would contact me if he thought he was in the tiniest danger. He shifted his position in the chair as his back began to ache and his legs to twitch restlessly. The fool must have gotten caught, though I can't imagine how. He's probably dead by now. Even the Valdemarans wouldn't keep an assassin alive. They're probably working out ways to pickle his head and send it to High Priest Solaris in Karse.

In fact, given the evidence from Valdemar, the assassin must have been caught before he did any damage. Only that would account for the seamless way in which Selenay and her allies were presenting themselves.

He botched the assassination, then he botched his attempt to escape. That's what I get for relying on operatives someone else puts in place.

He shook his head and checked in a desk drawer for a headache remedy. Like the Hardornens, he had other things to worry about besides far-off Valdemar. At the moment, there was nothing they could or could not do to him or the Imperial forces. And there was nothing he could do to or about them.

It was far more important to deal with the immediate survival of his own troops.

I must have those plans for winter quarters. Should I step up the patrols? What are we going to do about food supplies if the plan can't be carried out?

Could he get his men to help the locals make a really efficient harvest? There was always grain left in the fields, but if he sent his men out to glean behind the harvesters, there would be that much more—

It might not seem like much, but experience had taught him that many small gains often added up to a large total. If he could just find enough of those little gains, he might have enough to ensure his victory against his real enemy.

Not Valdemar, but the mage-storms, and what the storms gave birth to. Concentrate on one enemy at a time. I can't afford to divide my attention or my resources...

Frantic pounding at his bedroom door woke him. He had taken to leaving a single lamp burning, not because the darkness disturbed him, but because he might be awakened at any hour. He raised himself up on one elbow, instantly alert. "Enter!" he called imperiously. Keitel, Sejanes' apprentice, burst in the moment he spoke the word. Behind him trailed his aides with more lamps and his clothing. Only one thing could have brought Keitel and the aides here at this hour, in such a state of excitement.

"The Portal?" he asked, reaching for his trews and pulling them on.

"It's up, Commander," the skinny youngster blurted, every hair on his head standing up in a different direction. "Sejanes sent for the men—he said to tell you the Portal's unstable, he doesn't know how long he can hold it open, but that you'll have the time for what we need most."

"Get back to him, then; he'll need everyone to keep it open, including you." Excitement chased the last sleep-fog from his mind. The youngster nodded, hesitated for a moment, then fled the room. Tremane pulled on the rest of his clothing, his aides handing each piece to him as quickly as he donned the last. From his bedside table he took the packet of papers he had ready and stuffed it into the breast of his tunic. He jumped to his feet, stamping hard to settle his boots in place, and turning that motion into a leap of his own for the door. His aides and guards sprinted down the hall behind him; from their panting he was amused to think they were finding it unexpectedly difficult to keep up with "the old man."

Didn't pay any attention to the amount of time my sword master spends training me, obviously. The few guards and the like that he passed stared after him with eyes wide and mouths agape. The Commander never ran—

Except when time is against us. If Sejanes said that the Portal was unstable, he was not exaggerating for effect. Tremane cursed as his boot soles slipped and skidded on the stone floors; this would be a fine time to slip and break an ankle!

The manor was built around a central courtyard, and it was here that the mages had set up their working area. Tonight the courtyard was ablaze with light, torches in every available sconce—and in the center of the courtyard, doubling the illumination, was the Portal.

To Tremane's experienced eye, the instability was obvious; instead of a clean curve, the edge of the Portal wavered and undulated like a ribbon in a breeze. It should not have been giving off as much light as it was, either; that was a sign of wasted energy.

The mages surrounded the Portal, each adding his effort to the whole. To the untrained eye, the Portal itself, a dark hole, laced with lightning and surrounded by white fire, could easily have been a living thing. It had a feeling of life; in this case, a rather sinister life, and the movement of its edge added to the effect. To the trained eye, however, the Portal was an inferior specimen of its type. It was the kind of structure a group might build as their first effort at such an undertaking.

As Tremane and his escort came through the doorway and slowed to a walk, the mages surrounding the Portal managed to exert a bit more control over their creation. The boundary stiffened into a proper curving arch, and the dark, energy-laced center faded, replaced by a view of a loading platform and a warehouse wall.

The rest of the handpicked men entered at a quick-march from another door, then took their places on the cobblestone courtyard with drill-team precision. Tremane straightened his uniform tunic and took his place at their head; his aides and all but two of his guards fell back. There were no wasted orders or movements. As they had all rehearsed, the men moved in behind him as he strode toward the Portal and through it.

He had expected the usual disorientation of a Portal crossing, but this was much worse. As his feet touched the floor of the warehouse Portal platform on the other side, he staggered and went to one knee. His men were similarly disoriented as they came through, wavering to one side or another as if they were drunk or faint. One or two clutched their stomachs and turned pale.

He fought back nausea and regained control of himself by hauling himself erect, closing his eyes, and locking his knees until his dizziness passed.

He opened his eyes again as soon as his stomach and balance settled. He and his men stood precisely where he had expected them to be; on a wide loading platform in front of the permanent Portal, under a clear night sky. Two steps down took them to the walkway, and a ramp ran from the walkway to the large wooden loading doors that were directly before them. The walkway led to the office, and predictably there was a light in the office window. This was an Imperial depot; there would be a clerk on duty, no matter what the hour. Tremane pulled his packet of forged and genuine papers from his tunic.

"Stay here until you see the loading doors open," he told the men, then motioned to his guards to follow. He didn't think about the fraud he was about to perpetrate, or he might have shown some sign that not all was correct. He simply walked briskly to the office and pulled open the door, confronting the startled clerk inside with a bland and impassive expression.

He dropped his papers on the desk in front of the middle-aged, stoop-shouldered man, and stepped back, folding his arms over his chest. This place had the familiar look and smell of every Imperial office—the precise placing of desk, stool, and filing cases, the scent of paper, pungent ink, and dust, with a hint of sealing wax and lamp oil.

The clerk gingerly picked up the top paper and read it through; he examined the seal, his face reflecting growing bewilderment, and then read the second. By the time he reached the end of the stack and looked up at Tremane, his face was stiff with shock.

"S-sir—" the clerk stammered, "—s-surely this can't b-be right—"

"I have my orders," Tremane said flatly. "You have yours."

"B-but—these orders—they s-say—you are t-to strip the d-depot—"

Tremane allowed his expression to soften a little. "Friend, with all the Portals down, it's going to be impossible to get supplies in or out of here. We had to make an extraordinary effort just to get this one working, and it won't last past the next storm, if that. Shouldn't the supplies go to men who need them, before they rot or get spoiled by vermin?"

The direct appeal, one to the clerk's good sense and logic, had the desired effect. The man faltered, looking from the papers to Tremane and back again. "But if there are no supplies here, there's nothing for us to do—"

"That's why the last papers authorize you to take indefinite leave," Tremane explained patiently. "Strange things are occurring, and you are stationed out on the edge of the Empire, alone and unsupported. There is no reason for you to suffer this isolation when you could be sent home during this crisis. If the warehouse is empty there will be no need to guard or staff it. Your Emperor knows that you must be anxious about your families, and he knows that without Portals it will probably take you some time to make your way to them. Hence, he has given you indefinite leave."

The clerk picked up the last paper and reread it, his face clearing. After all, it did authorize Tremane to pay him a full year's salary as discharge pay—him and every other clerk here. "There's just the four of us, Commander. Standard depot—and we're all clerks, no—"

"That's quite all right; I brought my own men," he interrupted. "Let's just get those doors open and move out those supplies while we still can."

"Yes, sir!" The clerk jumped to his feet, knocking over his stool in his haste, and hurried over to unlatch the winch that operated the huge loading doors. By clever use of mechanical contrivances, this rather undersized and scrawny individual was able to open doors even the strongest guard would have had difficulty hoisting.

As soon as the doors opened, the men poured in. This, too, had been rehearsed, since every Imperial depot was built to the same pattern. They went straight to the most important items of food and rough-weather supplies. Once those were through the Portal, they would move to items of lower priority: uniforms, bedding, and blankets. And once those had been carried off, they would proceed to strip the depot for as long as the Portal held. Imperial depots were notorious for containing equipment so antique and out-of-date that even a historian would have been hard put to determine the function. Among these, there might be items useful to them in a time when magic had ceased to work. And if nothing else, such items could be converted to their component parts.

Meanwhile, Tremane ordered the clerk to get him the records and to open the lock room at the back of the office containing all records and the Imperial gold stores normally held to pay for deliveries from civilian merchants and for pay shipments to the troops. Out of that, he counted out the discharge pay for the four clerks, putting the small, wafer-thin gold coins up in pay packets and neatly labeling each with the man's name and his own seal.

"As of this moment, you are free to go," he said kindly as he handed the clerk his particular packet. "We can carry on from here. If you have a stable, help yourself to mounts and baggage animals on my authority."

"Thank you, Commander," the clerk replied, his face now full of eagerness. He shuffled backward, toward the door, as he spoke. "I've got a long way to travel—perhaps I ought to make an early start of it—"

He could not back out of there fast enough, and Tremane thought he knew why. Every Imperial clerk indulged in a certain amount of graft; reselling Imperial supplies and the like, recording that he had paid more for deliveries than he'd actually given out. This man wanted to. get out of reach before Tremane compared the lists of what should be there with what actually was.

Little did he know that Tremane didn't care. Of course the mice would have nibbled the crust; most of the loaf was still there, and that was what mattered.

He had his own reason for wanting to be rid of the clerks. When—or if—the authorities did descend on this place, if there was no one here, that would confuse the situation still further. Somehow the authorities would have to decipher where the clerks had gone before they could find out whose seal was on the pay packets—assuming that the clerks kept the packets. He intended to take his papers with him when he left. All the authorities would have was a looted warehouse, but no idea who was responsible. Unless, of course one or more agents managed to get "left" behind.

Even if that happened, it would still take the agents a long time to reach the capital and the Emperor. They might not make it. Conditions could be bad enough here to prevent even an experienced agent from reaching his contact. All of the spy masters relied on Portals and mage-crafted messengers to get information to and from their agents. Without those, an agent might not even know who his contact was!

Meanwhile, his guards were taking the gold through and handing it over to the custody of his other guards, to be placed under double guard and lock in the strong room. Gold was heavy; the men could not move much at a time. But, as he had hoped, there was enough there to pay his entire army for a year. That would give him the time he needed to win their personal loyalty.

Once the gold was all across, he directed his two guards to join the rest of the men in stripping the warehouse to the bare floor, walls, and ceiling. There were even stores of lumber here, and if he got the chance, if the Gate held long enough, he'd take those.

They had been at this task for long enough that the vital supplies were all through; now the men just made a human chain, passing boxes, bundles, crates, and barrels through without bothering to check what was in them. He had clerks of his own that could inventory the mass of supplies at leisure.

While they worked, Tremane helped himself to the warehouse records. What he found there confirmed his fears and his hopes; the personnel here had been in disarray for weeks, without orders, contact from their superiors, or any sign that the Empire still existed. They had no idea what was going on; all they knew was that the Portals suddenly went dead, and that there were strange things going on outside the safe walls of the fortified depot. What he found indicated a certain amount of panic on their part, and he didn't blame them. In their place, he'd have been panicking, too.

The huge warehouse echoed strangely as the contents were emptied; the torches his men placed to light their way made oddly-moving shadows among the racks and shelves. He wished there might be time to loot the small stable that was surely attached to this post—but on the other hand, the four clerks would probably need every beast there, just to get themselves and their own goods home safely. It wouldn't do to be greedy, he chuckled inwardly.

The Portal showed no signs of deteriorating, and this warehouse was more than half emptied. As he checked on the progress of his men, he caught sight of another door where he had not expected one, and he stopped dead to stare at it.

Another door? Could it be possible that this depot was a complex of warehouses?

He ran across the dusty floor and wrenched the door open. Enough light came from the torches behind him to show him a sight to make his heart leap.

Grain. Tin barrel after barrel of grain—meant for horses, for cavalry, but perfectly edible by humans.

And here was the answer to the dilemma of how to keep both town and garrison alive. This would buy him the loyalty of the town, especially if the winter ran long and hard and supplies ran short. The farmers had been complaining that the weather had been bad and the harvest poor, and he had been assuming their complaints were nothing more than the usual. Every farmer he had ever known had complained about the weather and the harvest—they always did, and never would admit to having a good year.

But what if this time the complaints were genuine? He had seen the weather and the state of the fields for himself. How could he have thought that the harvest would be normal?

Because I didn't dare think otherwise, or I would have given up.

Quickly he hailed half of the men over to this new storehouse, telling them to haul the grain but leave the hay bales that would also be here for the very last. Hay was not a priority, but if there was time, why not take it, too?

I need more men. It was a risk, bringing still more men—men who had not been checked beforehand—across an unstable Portal, but the gain was worth the risk. Almost certainly some of these would arrange to be left behind. There would be agents among them. He didn't care.

He ran out to the Portal and sent a message across with one of the guards; Sejanes was no fool and he should know how many more would be safe to send across.

He went back to the men—but now it was to join them in a frenzy of hauling. He joined the line, working side-by-side with one of his own bodyguards and a man whose name he didn't even know for certain. When the man cursed him for clumsiness when he dropped a box, and cursed him again for being slow, he kept silent. It was more important to get one more box across that Portal than it was to maintain the distinction of Commander and subordinate. He sensed, rather than saw, more men making a second line; at the time he had his own hands full and sweat running into his eyes.

He had never done so much hard physical labor in his life. His muscles and joints begged him for the mercy of a rest, his lungs burned, and his throat and mouth were as parched as if he were crossing the desert. There was no rest; his line was down to transporting the lumber at the back of the warehouse, but the other line still had grain to move.

There was light outside now; at some point dawn had arrived, and he had missed it. How had Sejanes managed to hold the Portal up so long? The poor mages would be only semiconscious for a week after this!

His line broke up at that point; there was nothing more to move. Half of them went to the sides of the warehouse to try to get the few large objects—dismantled siege engines—that could not be hauled by a single man. The rest joined the grain line, but now the grain line was actually hauling hay bales!

At just that moment, a whistle shrilled from the Portal; the signal that the mages had held it as long as they could. Tremane had drilled his men in this, too; every one of them dropped what he was holding and sprinted for the Portal at a dead run. The new men who had not been drilled took their cue from the rest. He joined them; as they reached the outside they formed into four running ranks, since the Portal was only large enough for four abreast to cross at once. Those four ranks continued to race for the stone arch that marked this side of the Portal.

Despite his care, he knew that when he called for more men, he had allowed many agents to cross over, and now some of the men would deliberately lag behind, to remain when the Portal collapsed. There would be agents of the Emperor and of his own personal enemies among them. That would be fine; no one else knew that his orders were forged.

In a way, he wished them no ill, for if this Imperial depot had been left so completely on its own, that did not speak well for conditions in the Empire as a whole. They would have to somehow find transportation, work their way across several client states, and only then would they reach anything like solid Imperial territory. Faced with such a situation, he would give up and find a place to wait out the situation; they might well do the same.

And as for the rest who lagged behind—they had worked with a will, and he could not find it in his heart to condemn them for snatching the chance to stay on home ground. Without a doubt, the Empire would need them as much or more than he would.

And every man who stays here is one less mouth to feed—as well as one less agent that might turn to sabotage in the absence of other orders.

He was one of the last men through, and the instability in the Portal was directly reflected in the effect the crossing had on him. He landed on the other side in a tumble, unable to stand, his head reeling, his stomach racked with nausea. He lay on his side in a helpless heap for a moment until someone dragged him clear.

He opened his eyes and regretted doing so; the courtyard was spinning around him and the bright sunlight lanced into his skull like a pair of knives thrust into his eye sockets. He closed his eyes again, hastily, and simply lay where he was, waiting for the sickness to pass.

"It's coming down!" someone shouted, voice hoarse with exhaustion.

"Let it go—we can't wait any longer!" That was Sejanes' voice; the old man must have counted noses and come up short. "They'll be all right over there—drop the pattern, before it burns us all away!"

He opened his eyes again, just in time to see the Portal collapse, folding in on itself until it was a single point of bright, white light that burned for a moment, then crackled out.

The illness had passed enough to let him rise; he found that he was in a corner, dragged there by some wise soul on this side of the Portal. That was a help, for with the aid of the wall he was able to get to his feet and lean against firm support until the rest of his equilibrium returned.

Finally, when he thought he could present a reasonable front, he walked slowly out into the courtyard full of collapsed men, collapsing mages, and heaps of supplies.

The guards he had left here were still standing; he sent one of them off for help. "Stretchers and stretcher bearers," he directed. "Everyone down should be taken to his own quarters and given full sick leave for at least one day. Have the Healers look at them." He looked around the courtyard at the supplies still there, and frowned. They had emptied two warehouses—why wasn't this courtyard stuffed with supplies?

The guard correctly interpreted that frown. "As soon as things started coming across, Sejanes sent for more men to move the supplies by wagon out to storage, Commander," the man said. "They'll be back shortly."

Tremane's frown cleared. "Good. And the clerks are making inventories?"

"Yes, sir. Everything is as you ordered, Commander, except—" the guard could no longer suppress his grin, "—except that Sejanes held the Portal open longer than even he thought possible. Commander, you did it!"

Now, for the first time in weeks, he relaxed enough to reply to the guard's grin with one of his own. "Now, let's not tempt the Unkindly Ones with our hubris. We were lucky. We have no idea how long those supplies sat there, or what condition they're in. Half of them could be useless."

The guard nodded sagely. "Indeed, Commander. Shall I send for your sedan chair as well as the litter bearers?"

Tremane was about to refuse—he had scarcely used his sedan chair a handful of times in the past year—but a sudden wave of dizziness made him reconsider quickly and nod. "Do that. I'll be over by Sejanes."

He managed to get as far as his old mentor before needing to sit down, and he succeeded in seating himself on a box without making it look as if he had collapsed. The old man was in about the same shape as Tremane—which in itself was remarkable, given the strain under which the mages must have been laboring. Sejanes lay flat on his back on the cobblestones, and acknowledged Tremane's presence with only a wave of one hand.

"Well, old man," Tremane said, "we did it." He was rewarded by a thin smile and a weak twinkle in the old mage's eyes.

"We did. We've bought the time you needed, my boy. And I hope you're prepared to reward your hard-working mages—"

"I'm having you all moved into the best quarters this place affords," he interrupted. "There's no reason for you to be bivouacked with your units anymore when your units can't use your services. And to head off any question of favoritism, I'll make it known that after the great personal sacrifice you have all made in this effort, you've all been rendered invalids, or the next thing to it. Therefore, you need special consideration."

"You won't be far wrong, boy," Sejanes replied seriously. "We won't be up to much but bed rest for days."

"Then bed rest is what you'll get," Tremane promised. After a few silent minutes, the haulage crew returned, and with them, his aides. He hailed his chief aide Cherin over and put him in charge of the mages.

"Put them in the infirmary for now," he said. "And find a way to reshuffle my officers so that we can get quarters in the manor for every mage who worked on the Portal. I want them all moved in before the end of the week. They're going to be invalided out of field service for now."

Cherin looked at the mages, still lying where they had collapsed, and seemed more than convinced. "There're some store rooms could be made into barracks, Commander," he offered. "We could take your bodyguards, put 'em in there, shuffle the pages and messengers into their barracks, put the aides in the little rooms the boys have been in, and that'll give you rooms for each mage and still let the aides have private quarters."

"And it puts the boys back in a common room where the page-sergeant can keep an eye on them. That's good," Tremane agreed, with a wry yet appreciative smile. "Those little imps have been unnaturally good lately, but I don't have faith that the spell is going to last. See to it."

The aide saluted. "Sir!" he replied and marched off to begin the shuffling.

"You're a good lad, Tremane," Sejanes said gruffly, and closed his eyes.

At about that time, the sedan chair and its four carriers arrived, and Tremane decided it was time to let his aides do the work of getting everything organized. He gave each of them assignments and ordered them to have reports on his desk when he woke up. He climbed stiffly to his feet and took his place in his chair. The four carriers raised their poles to their shoulders and marched off to his suite as he lay back and closed his eyes.

I would like to sleep for a week. He wouldn't, though. He'd wake up as soon as his body had recovered enough to allow him to function. By then he would have some idea of what, precisely, they had looted from that depot.

He did know this much; even if, as he said, fully half of what they'd taken proved useless, he still had enough to see his men through a winter out of a Northman's nightmares. His men—and possibly even the town as well.

The future looked a hundred times brighter than it had yesterday. And as dark as things were at the moment, that was enough.

Two

A stable was hardly the place one normally took lessons in protocol, but neither Karal of Karse nor his adviser were precisely "normal" as an ambassador and his tutor.

It was a cold gray day; the sky was a solid sheet of low-hanging clouds. On the whole, the stable was not an unpleasant place to be on such a day, especially not for a young man who had begun life as a horse boy. It was no ordinary stable either. This was the foul-weather shelter for all Companions now resident at the Herald's Collegium and Palace at the Valdemar capital of Haven. The stalls were mostly empty; those that were filled were preternaturally silent, since Companions seldom acted or sounded much like horses.

But in every other way, this building, as no other place in all of Haven, reminded Karal of home. The warm scent of hay, the dusty aroma of grain, the rich odor of leather (as much a taste as a smell); all those comforted him and made him relax. Although the air outside was cold, inside, sitting next to a huge brown-tiled stove, Karal was as comfortable as he would have been in his own room.

"All right," Karal said, rubbing his tired eyes. "Explain to me how the followers of all these religions manage not to slaughter each other over their differences one more time."

That warm fire behind the iron door of the stove at his back crackled cheerfully, and the relative gloom of the stable was actually rather restful to his aching eyes. It was too bad Florion wouldn't fit into his suite at the Palace, though. A hot cup of tea would have been very nice right now.

Of course, a hot cup of tea might have put him to sleep, which was not a good idea at the moment.

His adviser shook his white head until his mane danced. :It's really very simple, Karal. The single rule that each of them must obey if they wish to continue practicing in Valdemar is "live and let live." You can proselytize as much as you wish, but you may not persecute, harass, intimidate, or otherwise make a nuisance of yourself. The secular laws of Valdemar take precedence over the dictates of every religion. No matter how deeply your religious feeling is offended by something allowed according to the religious practices of your neighbor, you have no right to force him to live by your rules, and no right to try to. If you can't live, by that, then you are escorted to the border and left there.:

Karal tried to imagine something like that being effective in Karse and failed utterly. His people would simply ignore the law and revel in their holy and God-given right to persecute, harass, intimidate, or even murder those who did not agree with them. If their God, in their own narrow interpretation of His Writ and Rules, said that something was wrong, then it was wrong for everyone, whether or not anyone else agreed even with that particular interpretation. Karsites had been cheerfully slaughtering each other over interpretations of the Writ and Rules almost as long as they had been killing those outside their borders and religion. Things had been different once, as he had found from his reading, but the current state had been holding for generations. Since Vanyel's time, in fact. Or, as Ulrich would have pointed out—since the time that the Son of the Sun had been elected by the Sun-priests and not by Vkandis Himself. "It seems too simple to work," he replied wearily.

Florian scraped a hoof on the floor, which Karal had learned was the equivalent of a shrug. :I suppose it works largely because it was established as a law back when there were fewer people in Valdemar and all of them were of the same religion. At that point, of course, no one saw any reason why such a law shouldn't be in effect. If you plant a tree early so that it has time to grow, the roots are too deep for a later storm to tear it up.:

A cat from the stables strolled by—a perfectly ordinary black-and-white and not one that bore the vivid markings of a Firecat. Karal held out his fingers to the mouser, but his majesty had other things on his mind.

"That sounds like another Shin'a'in proverb," Karal observed, turning a little so that his right side could benefit from the warmth of the stove. Was it his imagination, or was it too early in the autumn for it to be so cold? "You've been tromping around An'desha too long."

Florian "chuckled"—more of a whicker. The fact that Karal was talking to a blue-eyed white horse might seem very odd to anyone from beyond the borders of Valdemar. The fact that he was talking to a Companion—or, as he would have said a year ago, a "cursed Valdemar Hellhorse"—would have been sheer blasphemy to many still in his own land of Karse. But Karal had learned more about Heralds and their Companions in that last year than he had ever dreamed possible, and now he relied on Florian's advice in the ways of Valdemar as surely as he relied on his friend An'desha's advice in the ways of magic. Both were equally opaque to him although he was familiar with the effects of magic if not the practice of it. As for the ways of Valdemar—they were all as odd as this surface congeniality among religions.

"I guess I'd be safe to assume that any time I have to deal with a priest from Valdemar that they're going to tolerate me, even if they don't like me." At Florian's nod, he shrugged. "At least, that's easier than waiting for holy assassins to waylay me in the hallway."

:Holy assassins are going to come from outside Valdemar, if they come at all, and Kero has had a particular watch out for that sort for some time.: "Kero," of course, was Herald Captain Kerowyn, the only Herald in all of the history of Valdemar who was also the Captain of a mercenary Company. She was in charge of Valdemar's less conventional defenses—the ones that the Lord Marshal did not want to know about officially. She was also one of the—former—Great Enemies of Karse, and had been rumored to eat Karsite babies on toast for breakfast.

Karal could vouch for the toast, and Kero swore she didn't touch babies, Karsite or otherwise, before lunch at the earliest.

Florian did not actually "speak" to him; the Companion's "voice" echoed inside Karal's head. They called it "Mindspeaking" here. The locals took it for granted that Heralds and Companions talked to each other just like two human friends. One Herald could mention an appointment with a thought, and his Companion would round the corner a moment later, to bear the Herald on his way. It was odd, still, to see a Herald and Companion walk by, and witness the Herald suddenly breaking up in laughter at some silently-shared joke while the Companion whickered merrily. Heralds spoke with their minds and Companions answered, and none of it was considered the least bit unusual.

This was a magic that Karal had never even known existed before he came here—largely because in the past the Sun-priests did their best to eradicate children "Gifted" with such things. "Witchery," they called it, and hunted it out ruthlessly until Solaris took the Sun Throne.

Other Heralds had the ability to talk with each other as they did with their Companions. Some could move things without touching them, or see things at a distance. Others could see into the future or the past, and some had even stranger abilities.

All these things could be accomplished with the magic that Karal was familiar with, of course, but this was not the magic he knew. Sun-priests often had the ability to work "true" magic; the false priests used it to create "miracles" to deceive the gullible. Because such a power could be controlled, the Sun-priests had incorporated those with the ability to perform magic into their ranks, rather than destroying them.

The Valdemarans had the "witch-powers"; they called it "mind-magic," or "Gifts," and they were something that was inborn, though skill in them could be honed with training and practice.

Karal had gotten used to it, to a certain extent, although it never ceased to amaze him how casually the Heralds accepted these powers. And it would have been so very easy for those powers to be misused, as the power of true magic had been misused in Karse. Yet here—there were the Companions.

The only place to find training in mind-magic was at Herald's Collegium, and the only way to be accepted into the Collegium was to be Chosen by a Companion. Thereafter, the Companion acted as best friend, mentor, conscience, and sometimes stern taskmaster. The fact that the Companions happened to look like horses—always white, always blue-eyed was incidental. Florian told him once that the initial reason Companions came in that particular "shape"—rather than, say, a dog or a cat—was because a horse was not only ubiquitous and hence invisible, but because a horse was weapon, fellow fighter, and transportation all in one. In Karsite mythology, as a sort of mirror image of the reality, the Heralds, in their all-white uniforms, were the "White Demons," and the Companions the "Hellhorses."

Florian had been "assigned" to him by the other Companions when he first arrived as the secretary to his mentor, the ambassador from Karse, Master Ulrich. Florian had assured him many times that he had not been "Chosen" to be a Herald, which was normally what happened when a Companion sought out a particular human and spoke to him in his mind. No, in this case, Florian was simply an adviser, someone who could steer him through the complicated tangle of life in the Kingdom of Valdemar without having an agenda of his own to pursue. Karal had no reason to mistrust the Companion' s seemingly altruistic nature; after all, he had it on very trustworthy authority that Companions were the same as Karsite fire cats—particularly wise humans who had opted for rebirth in this rather odd form, the better to guide and advise those who held great power in their lands. Not being human, or having human concerns, made it possible for them to take the long, dispassionate view of things. That was the theory anyway. As Florian had once said, being solidly ensconced in a material body had a tendency to skew one's outlook sometimes. "And," he'd added obliquely, "it also depends on how many times you've been around."

Whatever that was supposed to mean.

Karal was graced—or burdened—with a Firecat, too, although he was not certain why. However, as wise as Altra was, he knew no more about Valdemar than Karal did. Both were somewhat handicapped when it came to understanding the land that had been Karse's enemy for centuries—as, once again, he was learning.

He dropped his head down into his hands for a moment, putting his cold fingertips against his aching temples. It helped, but not enough.

:You are tired,: Florian said with concern. :I am not certain I should continue to drill you without some rest.:

"I'd like some rest, too, but I'm meeting the entire Synod, or Assembly, or whatever it is they're calling it, tomorrow afternoon, and if I don't have the proper addresses down, I'm going to mortally offend someone." Karal sighed and massaged the muscles at the back of his neck. "I never wanted to be the Ambassador of Karse," he added mournfully. "I had my hands full enough being the aide. I was a secretary."

Florian didn't answer for a moment; he looked away, as if he were considering something. In the silence, Karal clearly heard mice scuttling around in the hay stored overhead. That was probably why the tomcat had not lingered for a scratch. :I hesitate to suggest this—it means you would have to trust me much more than you already do—but there is a way around this particular problem.:

"What?" Karal asked eagerly. He was perfectly willing to consider anything that might help at the moment. The "Holinesses, Radiances," "Excellencies," and other titles were all swimming in his poor, overheated brain and would not stick to any particular "uniform." He had no idea how he was going to master them all by tomorrow. Like so many things, this meeting had been sprung upon him with little warning.

:If you'd let me inside your mind, let your barriers down, I could look through your eyes, see who you were talking to, and prompt you,: Florian replied hesitantly. :I can show you how to let those barriers down easily enough. The problem is, I'll see more than surface thoughts if you did that. I'll know whatever you're thinking, and you tend to think about several things at once. You might not want me that intimately in your mind.:

Well, that was something of a quandary. Did he want Florian to know what he was thinking? Some of it wasn't going to be very flattering. He had already encountered some of the religious leaders of other sects here, and they had made very plain that there was no love lost between them and the representative of Vkandis Sunlord—even if, or especially if, that representative was a field-promoted secretary.

Now, it was true that the followers of Vkandis Sunlord had wrought terrible things against the followers of other religions in the past. But that was the past, in days when the Son of the Sun had been (to put it bluntly) a corrupt and venial tool of other interests than Vkandis'. High Priest Solaris had put an end to that, to the war with Valdemar, and to the insular and parochial attitude of those under her authority regarding those who lived outside the borders of Karse. Things were different now, and there had been Sun-priests spilling their blood to save Valdemar to prove it. Furthermore, Karal was hardly old enough to have done anything personally to anybody under the old rule despite the fact that some of these old goats seemed to hold him personally responsible for every slight and every harm worked upon their people and possessions since the time of Vanyel.

So Karal's innermost thoughts were hardly likely to be charitable.

On the other hand, if he couldn't trust Florian with those innermost thoughts, who could he trust?

"I think I had better accept that offer," he told the Companion. "But you ought to know you're likely to share in my headache as well."

:I don't mind,: Florian told him. :Not at all. Now, this is what you do, it's easy, really. You know how it feels when I talk to you?:

He nodded.

:Think of that, then imagine that you are reaching out a hand to me. When you "feel" me clasp it, your barriers will be down.:

It was actually quite easy to imagine just that, since Florian had never been a "horse" to him. He closed his eyes and stretched out an imaginary "hand" to his friend, and almost at once he had the uncanny sensation of having another "hand" enfold his. He opened his eyes, and for a moment experienced a very curious double image, the "Florian" he knew superimposed over a young man about his own age, thin, earnest, with dark hair and eyes, dressed in Herald's Whites.

The second image faded quickly, but Karal had to wonder. Was that what Florian had been—before?

:That's excellent!: Florian applauded. :Can you sense the difference?:

"Yes," he answered at once. "Now it's as if you're standing right at my shoulder and whispering in my ear."

:I'm seeing things through your eyes now. Mind you, I wouldn't advise it for the inexperienced. It's rather disorienting.: Florian chuckled, and Karal "felt" the chuckle at the same time that he heard the whicker.

:You're working so hard,: Florian continued wistfully. :I only wish I could do more to help you.:

"You help me a lot," Karal replied with feeling. "Just knowing that I have a real friend here helps more than I can say."

A light footstep at the door alerted him to the fact that he was no longer alone with Florian in the stable. "Only one?" An'desha asked as the Shin'a'in Adept entered the stable. "If I didn't know you didn't mean that literally, I would be sorely hurt." The teasing tone in his voice told Karal that he wasn't particularly serious.

As An'desha neared, Karal noted that he looked better than he had in days. Both of them had participated in a magical ceremony at the Valdemar/Iftel border that had been much more powerful and traumatic than either of them had ever dreamed possible. The end result of that was a temporary "breakwater" running from the northernmost tip of Iftel to the southernmost end of Karse, a breakwater that disrupted the mage-storms as they moved across the face of the land, broke them up and dissipated their energies harmlessly. It wouldn't last forever—for as the storms increased in power and frequency, they were tearing away at the new protections—but it bought them some time to come up with a better solution.

Of the two, An'desha had been the most exhausted, for he had been the one doing most of the work. Karal was not a mage; his mentor Ulrich had said once that he "had the potential to become a channel," but no one here knew what Ulrich had meant, until he was needed at the Iftel border.

Channeling must be instinctive, rather than learned. That was what other mages had said, once he described what had happened. He had recovered quickly, once they all returned to the capital of Haven and the expert care of the Healers. An'desha's recovery had been much slower.

An'desha's complexion was closer to the healthy golden tones of his Shin'a'in ancestors now, rather than the pasty yellow he had been sporting. There was more silver at the roots of his hair, which was hardly surprising, considering how much magical power he'd been handling. Handling the extremes of mage-energy bleached the hair and eyes to silver and blue, so Karal had been told. That was why An'desha's lover, the Tayledras Adept Firesong, had hair as white as snow before his eighteenth birthday, as it was to this day.

Karal had been told that An'desha had once been something called a "Changechild," a creature with a body that seemed part-animal, part-human; changed into that form by the spirit of an evil Adept who had taken possession of An'desha's body and twisted it into the form he chose, that of a cat-man. Mornelithe Falconsbane had eventually been driven out and destroyed, and by some miracle—literally a miracle, according to those who had been there at the time—An'desha's body had been returned to the form it had once held. With one exception.

An'desha's eyes were those of a cat's, still: green-yellow, and slit-pupiled. Now, though, they were growing paler, more silvery blue than greenish yellow. Again, that was the effect of all the magic An'desha had handled in setting up the breakwater.

Those were the outward signs of change. There were other signs; a calm that had not been evident before, an air of relaxation. Confidence. An'desha knew what he was now, and was comfortable with the knowledge. He also knew what he was not.

He was not Falconsbane, though he shared that evil creature's memories.

"I'm glad you know I did not mean to exclude you," Karal said with a welcoming smile.

"And I know what you meant—you are glad to have one Valdemaran friend. I am as much a foreigner and lost among these crazed folk as you." An'desha winked at Florian and dragged a short bench over from beside the stove. He was wearing clothing that marked him as foreign as Karal's Karsite robes, a cross between Hawkbrother garb and the quilted winter clothing of his own Shin'a'in nomads. "Firesong is complaining of the cold and swearing he will freeze to death before the first snow. Darkwind reminded him that his home Vale has winters worse than any in Valdemar. Firesong, of course, retorted that he never had to go out into such barbaric weather, and Elspeth chose to point out that he showed up at Darkwind's Vale riding through a snowstorm. He claimed it was because he represented his Vale and thus he had to make a dramatic appearance, and Darkwind said he was just posing. This became a contest of exaggerations, and no one noticed when I left." An'desha was laughing, so the "argument" must not have been that serious. "Firesong looking for pity and he is not going to find it from a Herald and a Tayledras scout, I fear."

"Nor from you?" Karal teased.

"Nor from me." An'desha stretched out his booted foot toward the stove. "If he seeks it, I shall only tell him what he told me so very often; too much sympathy makes one look for excuses, not answers. If he does not like the weather, perhaps he should consider making a Veil to cover Haven and turning it all into a Tayledras Vale."

"Ouch! A hit, indeed." Karal chuckled, and Florian whickered his own amusement. "Poor Firesong! All hands are raised against him today."

"It is only the weather that makes him irritable," An'desha said matter-of-factly. "In that, I cannot blame him too much. Grim, gray, gloomy, and chill! I hope that the farmers are able to get their harvests in, or we all shall be wearing tighter belts come spring."

"I don't know. I haven't heard that things are any worse than previous years, but no farmer anywhere admits to a good yield," Karal replied. "I have heard that things have improved, now that the breakwater is up." That gave him an opening he'd been looking for. "An'desha—you were outside the Iftel border. Did you see anything when I went in?"

"How do you mean? I saw a great deal, both with MageSight and my own two kitty-slit eyes." An'desha pointed to them, then crossed his legs gracefully and leaned forward a little. The wood of his seat creaked as he moved.

Karal thought carefully and phrased his question as clearly as he could. "Did it seem to you that the magic barrier at the border actually... recognized me in some way?"

"Oh, there's no doubt of that!" An'desha told him firmly. "It touched and tested you before it allowed you to pass within. I Saw it myself. Short, then longer tendrils." He frowned a little as he concentrated. "The area you were in brightened, and I Saw things—it is hard to describe—I saw the energies touching you, and I knew from some of—of Falconsbane's memories that they were what he called 'probes,' ways to test someone. Though what, precisely, you were being tested for, I cannot say."

"But why did it recognize me?" Karal blurted. "Altra was very firm about that, remember? He said the border would only recognize me of all of us. So why me?"

"It wouldn't have been only you," An'desha pointed out. "He said that it had to be a Karsite Sun-priest of a particular kind. Ulrich would have been the first choice. And obviously, Solaris would have served as well."

"But what is the connection between the magic at the border of Iftel and a Karsite Sun-priest?" Karal asked, frustrated. "And just what is Iftel? No one can get in or out, except for a very few, all of them selected traders and Healers, and you couldn't get one of them to talk if you tortured him, which is the point, I suppose. I've asked Altra—when he happens to show up, which isn't often since we got back—and all he does is switch his tail and tell me that I'll find out when the time is right."

:I can't help you; I'm as baffled as you are,: Florian admitted. :Sorry, but there it is. Neither Altra nor Vkandis Sunlord have bothered to confide in this insignificant Companion.:

"I suppose we'll just have to be patient. Frankly, if your Vkandis is anything like the Star-Eyed, I'm afraid He's probably going to insist that you figure it out for yourself." An'desha shrugged. "Deities seem to be like that. If I were one, I'd have a little more pity on my poor, frustrated, thick headed followers."

Karal had to laugh at that, and reflected again how much he himself had changed. A year ago such a joke would have had him white with shock at the irreverence, not to say blasphemy.

An'desha smiled. "Good. Finally, I've made you laugh. You should be laughing more; you look as if haven't had a good laugh in days. And why haven't you been spending any time down at the Compass Rose with Natoli and the other students? I was down there last night. They've been missing you."

"I'd like to," Karal replied wistfully, "but I don't have the time. I'm doing my old job and Ulrich's, too. And having to learn all the things he knew about protocol without having the leisure to learn them over the course of a year or more." He shook his head as Florian's ears dropped sympathetically. "It started almost as soon as we got back from the border, and it hasn't let up any. I can't just be a place-holder, An'desha, I have to be a real envoy, whether I'm ready for it or not."

:Too true.: Florian nuzzled him, and he absently patted the Companion's nose. And got another curious overlay of someone clasping his shoulder, and he patted the comforting spectral hand in thanks.

"Take today, for instance. Please take today," Karal continued. "I hadn't even finished my breakfast before a page brought me a message from our border. There's a Herald down there trying to arbitrate a dispute between some Holderkin and a set of Karsites who style themselves 'border-riders.' Neither party would accept a Herald, so it got thrown back in my lap and it had to be answered immediately."

"Did you?" An'desha asked with interest. "Could you?"

"In this case, at least, yes." He made a sour face. "I happen to know more than I'd like about the border-riders. They aren't much better than bandits; back in the old days, they had a habit of keeping two sets of clothing, Valdemaran and Karsite, and raiding farms on both sides of the border. Now that Karse is at peace with Valdemar, they can't do that anymore, so they've settled down to the odd cattle theft or helping themselves to everything in a house when the family is away at the Temple Fair." He frowned, then took a deep breath and grinned a little. "They tried abducting the odd Holderkin girl, but often as not they couldn't tell the girls from the boys, and in either case they generally wished they'd stuck their hands in a wasps' nest instead when the family came boiling out, looking for blood. With no protection from the guards on our side of the border, and a kidnapped brat screaming blue murder, they didn't get away with that very often."

"So what was the dispute this time?" An'desha asked.

"The usual; cattle the Holderkin swore were theirs. Knowing what I know, I pointed out that the Herald should check the ear-notches to see if they were fresh. Holderkin don't notch the ears of their cattle because they hold them in common at each Holding; Karsites do, when the cattle are still calves, because cattle theft is in our blood, I'm afraid. If the notches were fresh, the cattle had been recently stolen, and there you have it."

:Oh, do tell him the outcome, it's rather funny,: Florian prompted.

Karal chuckled. "I got word back that most of the cattle had freshly-notched ears, but on just about a third of them the knotches were clearly done when the cattle were young. It seeing that the Holderkin were not above trying to get a little revenge by claiming the whole herd instead of just the ones that had been stolen."

An'desha laughed. "You should tell Talia; she'll be amused, I think."

"I shall; really, I think you're right. She certainly has no great admiration for her own kin." He sighed. "I just wish all the things I'm asked to settle were so easy to solve. Tomorrow I'm supposed to meet with the heads of nearly every sect and religion in Valdemar, and settle some disputes between the splinter sect of Vkandis that took root up here in Vanyel's time and some Sun-priests that came up from Karse during the war with Hardorn. I'm afraid I'm not going to make anyone happy with my decisions this time."

An'desha made sympathetic noises. "That is not something I would care to deal with. I remember—" He paused. "I have noted that in matters of religion logic, facts, and reason bear little weight when measured against emotion. It does not matter what is, when people are convinced that the very opposite is what should be."

"I wish that were less true. I could pile up a hundred facts in favor of a particular argument, and all would be dismissed in favor of 'but that is not what I believe.' I am afraid that my age is going to tell against me as well." He eyed An'desha's silvering hair enviously. "Perhaps I ought to have you impersonate me. Or better still, have Darkwind do it. They would respect silver hair more than black."

"Oh, why not go the whole way and ask Firesong to do it?" An'desha laughed. "I can just see the faces of those stolid priests as Firesong sweeps in, wearing his version of a Sun-priest's robes."

"Oh, glory!" Karal had to laugh at that idea. Firesong's clothing was never less than flamboyant. "And once he began to talk, he'd have them all so tangled in logic and illogic, and dogma and cant, that they wouldn't even remember their own creeds!"

"It is entirely likely," An'desha agreed. "And it is a pity you wouldn't dare. I believe he would probably have a wicked good time of it if you asked him to."

"Now there is a 'White Demon,' for certain," Karal chuckled. "I think he gets more enjoyment out of twisting people around and playing with them than any other pursuit."

"I would not say he is that manipulative," An'desha temporized, "But there is a streak in him that makes him want to prod at people simply to get a reaction, and the more dramatic, the better."

"He certainly has a talent for drama, whether being at the center of it or inducing it," Karal agreed, and sighed. "Well, Florian seems to have solved the problem of how I am to remember who goes with what title tomorrow, so I shall be able to get a little rest tonight."

"I came here thinking you would go to the Compass Rose with me," An'desha said, looking hopeful. "Don't you think that just for once the Court can do without you at dinner? They were baking sausage rolls at the Rose this afternoon, and I'm told that the new yellow cheese is excellent."

"Demon! You know I'd do anything for good cheese and sausage rolls!" These were the closest foods Karal could find to the homey fare at the inn where he had grown up, and An'desha knew it. He cast an imploring glance at Florian. "Could I be absent, just this once?"

Florian was not proof against what the Companion had called "Karal's lost-puppy eyes." With a shake of his head, Florian gave in without a fight. :I'll see that it's arranged,: he promised, :even if I have to tell an untruth and claim you're with me. But you'd better go now, or something else is likely to come up to prevent you from going at all.:

The Compass Rose was a tavern unlike any other in all of Haven, and possibly all of Valdemar. It wasn't so much the food—which was quite good, but by no means up to the demands of a gourmet—or the drink, which was just about average. It was the clientele.

The Palace grounds actually hosted three Collegia; Herald's, Bardic, and Healer's—but there was a fourth unofficial Collegium there as well. If one looked into almost any given classroom, there would be four uniform colors in evidence. A gray uniform meant that the student in question was a Herald-trainee, a rust-brown tunic identified a Bardic student, and a pale green robe betokened a fledgling Healer. But a blue uniform was an "unaffiliated" student. More often than not these were merely the offspring of courtiers who preferred to have their families with them rather than back on the estate or holding. Classes at all three Collegia were open to them, and they were required in these days to wear a blue uniform, although that had not always been the case. But there was always a group of students who came from common blood, who were there at the Collegia, receiving the best education possible in Valdemar, because of merit or exceptional intelligence. They usually had a sponsor, either in the Court or one of the three Circles of Heralds, Bards, or Healers.

Most of these were divided into two groups; pure scholars and "artificers."

The latter were the people who would go out into Haven and beyond, to invent and build—bridges, mills, roads, cunning devices which would allow one to navigate or survey the land accurately—the list of possibilities was as endless as the imaginations of those who were doing the inventing.

And most of these spent their "leisure" time at the Compass Rose.

So did their Masters, the teachers at the three Collegia, and those artificers who resided in Haven itself. And "leisure" time was relative, for at any given moment in the Compass Rose you could find people working out the difficulties in the gears of a new mill or a student project—planning an irrigation system or arguing over the results of the last exam—

Or finding a way to integrate magic with logic and avert the peril of the mage-storms.

The students and teachers at the Compass Rose had been just as responsible for the creation of the magical breakwater as any of the mages whose talents and powers built it. If it had not been for them, in fact, there probably would never have been a "breakwater" at all. The entire concept was a new one, and mages were accustomed to using only the old, tried, and proven ways of doing something.

When Karal had first arrived in Haven, he had been introduced to the daughter of the Herald who had been their guide through Valdemar to the capital, a young lady named Natoli who was one of those "student-artificers." She had taken him to the Compass Rose, for she had known that among people who are accustomed to questioning everything, a "hated Karsite" was likely to be given the benefit of the doubt until he proved himself. That had been a lucky chance, for when the mage-storms first began wreaking havoc upon Valdemar, it occurred to Karal that the inquisitive and analytical minds of those same people were the ones best suited to taking the problem apart and perhaps coming up with a new answer.

Sometimes the most vital part of solving a problem was simply getting people to think about it.

For the first time, mages and artificers spoke to one another, and a new synthesis resulted.

Unfortunately for Karal, he hadn't gotten to see the aftermath of that synthesis since his duties had kept him away from the Rose, his friends there, and from Natoli. He was afraid now that she would be angry with him for deserting her for so long. Matters had been tending in the direction of something more than mere friendship, and now she might be thinking that he was getting cold feet over the idea.

A crowded tavern was not the best place to explain himself to someone who was possibly hurt and angry—but it was better than not seeing her at all.

It was that, and not the sausage rolls and cheese, that really took him to the tavern tonight.

He couldn't tell if An'desha was aware of that or not. The Shin'a'in was very good at keeping his thoughts to himself when he chose, and the subtle differences in his eyes made his expressions a little harder to read than most people's. On the other hand, An'desha was Natoli's friend, too, and she might have confided in him.

If nothing else, he thought, as the two of them wound their way through the streets of Haven to where the tavern lay, wedged in between a warehouse and a clock maker shop, it will be good to be just myself for one evening, and not His Excellency, the Karsite Envoy. It had gotten dark early, in part due to the heavy overcast, and the chill, damp air, though windless, had gotten colder yet. The darkness seemed very thick, as if it were swallowing up all the light. He was glad both of his heavy coat and the light from the streetlamps.

They turned a corner and were finally on the cobblestone street in the merchant district. The Compass Rose stood in the middle of the block. As usual, the Rose identified itself by the hum of conversation long before they reached the doorstep. Rumor had it that the clock maker who shared a wall with the tavern was deaf; Karal certainly hoped so, or the poor man would never get any sleep at night.

From the sound, the Rose was full, which was the usual case on sausage roll night. The tavern boasted both a carved door and a carved sign bearing the compass rose of its name, both illuminated by torches. Karal hung back, feeling suddenly shy, as An'desha reached for the brass handle and opened the carved wooden door.

Cacophony assaulted them the moment the door swung wide, and Karal felt a twinge of nostalgia. it was as if nothing had changed—the room was exactly as it had been the first time Natoli had brought him here.

Table after table was full of students—eating and talking at the same time, gesturing with rolls or a piece of cheese, making mechanical arrangements out of the cups and plates, much to the disgust of those who were trying to use those cups and plates. The tables themselves were covered with rough brown paper, because the students tended to draw on them to illustrate some point or other, whether or not the surface was suitable for drawing. There were one or two of the Masters out here, usually with a tableful of their own students, prodding them through an assignment. The rest of the Masters were in the back room, a room reserved for them alone. A student "graduated" when he (or she) was invited to take his meal back in that hallowed sanctuary; there was no other special ceremony marking the ending of his life as a student and the beginning of his life as a professional. Here there were Masters, but no apprentices nor journeymen.

The roar continued for a moment as the door closed behind them with a thud, and Karal let his ears get used to the noise and his eyes to the light. The Rose was one of the few taverns where the light was as important as the drink, since so many here were working on projects as they ate. In fact, the lighting in the Throne Room at the Palace was dim by comparison. After coming in from the thick darkness outside, the glare of light took some getting used to.

But as they stood there, and Karal tried to see if Natoli and her cronies were at their usual table, the uproar began to subside, as people saw who was standing in the doorway, and turned to poke neighbors who hadn't yet noticed. As Karal shifted his weight uneasily, the roar faded into absolute silence.

No one moved. Then, off to the right, a single person stood up, a person who had been sitting with her back to the door. She turned and peered across the sea of faces to the doorway.

It was Natoli. And for a moment, Karal considered bolting back outside. She's upset with me, and everyone knows it... I've hurt her feelings, and now they all hate me. Oh, glory, what am I going to do?

"Karal?" she said clearly, and her strong, handsome face lit up with a welcoming smile. Natoli was not "pretty"—but her face had such character written in every line that you never noticed. "Havens, they finally let you take a night off! It's about time! Get over here! Look, everybody, it's Karal!"

The place erupted again, this time with cheers of welcome, a few playful catcalls, and offers of beer, food, or both. As Karal and An'desha waded through the crowd on their way to Natoli's table, he was staggered often by the hearty back slaps and playful punches his friends aimed at him. It occurred to him then that sometimes being Natoli's friend could be as hazardous as being her enemy!

He didn't manage to get across the room without being loaded down with food and an overfilled mug that slopped every time someone slapped his back. He kept apologizing, but it didn't seem that anyone noticed. Or perhaps they were just used to stray beer going everywhere.

Natoli's table was crowded, as usual, but also as usual there was always room for one or two more. People edged over and places were made for him and An'desha, one on either side of Natoli. As he sat down, Natoli helped herself to one of the many sausage rolls that had been thrust at him and offered him a plate of cheese in return.

He shared his bounty with anyone who didn't have food in front of him, and in the course of getting everyone settled again, he lost all of the apprehension he'd felt.

"You looked like a Bardic student in front of a hostile audience when you came in," she said, quite matter-of-factly. "Problems?"

"I suppose I was afraid that you would all be upset with me for not coming here before this," he said, a little shyly. "You might think I thought I was too good for you, now that I'm the Ambassador. Or—something."

She raised a hand and mimed a cuff at his ear. "Be sensible. Father's a Herald, remember? Just because I don't stick my nose into Court, that doesn't mean I don't know what's going on. They've had you tied up with more meetings and business than any one person has a right to be burdened with, and we all knew it. I made sure everyone knew that."

He relaxed at that. "I didn't want you to think that I'd forgotten who my friends are."

"Ha." She applied herself to her meal with a grin. "You've been working, and we haven't exactly been idle. Even if everyone else in Valdemar thinks that the crisis was solved, we know we only put it off for a while. We're still trying to work out a solution. Master Levy thinks there won't be a solution; he thinks we're going to have to come up with one make-do after another, because he thinks that the problem is getting too complicated to actually solve in the time we have."

"Do the mages know that?" he asked, feeling a chill. More temporary solutions? Doesn't that leave us open to mistakes and the results of mistakes?

"The mages know," An'desha confirmed. "At the moment they're trying to let their minds lie fallow while they track the current patterns of mage-energy for Master Levy's crew to analyze. I think some of them are hoping that if they don't try to think about a solution, one will spring forth from the back of their heads, fully formed."

Natoli snorted but didn't comment otherwise.

"Well, that's not necessarily bad thinking," one of the others pointed out. "I'm not talking about wishful thinking—it's just that if you try too hard to put all the facts together, sometimes they won't fall into place. Come on, Natoli, you know that even happens to us!"

"I suppose you're right," Natoli admitted grudgingly. "There is Cletius and the bathtub, for instance. It's just that some of these mages are just so certain that they can vibrate their way to answers that it makes me want to drown them all."

"Let's talk about something else," Karal urged. "Something that has nothing to do with mages or mage-storms or the Empire. What's exciting?"

A red head at the end of the table popped up. "Steam!" he exclaimed. "That's what's exciting! There's no end to what we can do with it! Who needs magic? Steam will save the world!"

"Don't go too far overboard," Natoli warned. "There're problems with steam power that we really ought to consider before we have people riding all over in steam-driven carriages. You have to burn things to heat water, and that makes smoke, and what happens when we start putting more smoke in the air? There's already a soot problem in Haven from all the heating and cooking fires."

"But you won't need heating and cooking fires if we heat everyone's house with the hot waste water from the steam driven mills and manufactories," the other argued. "In fact, we should eliminate most of the soot problem that way."

"Not if you replace every one of those cook fires with one heating the boiler in a steam carriage," someone else put in. "Natoli's right about that. We really need to think about what we're doing before we launch into something we can't stop."

"Wait a moment," Karal interrupted. "Steam carriages?"

"One of the Masters came up with a water pump for draining mines that was steam driven, and someone else realized that the same principle could be used as the motive power for a carriage, by basically adding wheels to the whole affair rather than having a stationary boiler," Natoli explained. She snatched a stick of charcoal out of someone else's hand and began to draw on the paper covering the table in front of them. "You see—here's the boiler, in front of the firebox; pressure builds up in here and you vent it into the cylinder—the piston gets driven back—that turns a wheel—"

As she sketched, Karal began to see what she was talking about. "But why steam carriages at all?" he asked. "Aren't horses good enough?"

Natoli's eyes sparkled, and he realized he had uncovered her secret passion. "But these go faster than horses, Karal," she said. "They never get tired, they can pull more than horses can without hurting themselves, and the only time they have to stop is when they run out of fuel or water."

"Huh." He could think of places where that would be useful. In the mountains, where the roads were cruelly hard on cart horses Or any time you needed to send something very quickly somewhere. Supplies, perhaps, or soldiers. Of course these things would be limited to places where the roads were good, which was quite a limitation, when you thought about it. Using them on a regular basis meant that the roads would have to be improved and kept in repair, and that could get rather expensive....

"We're thinking about putting them on rails or in grooved tracks," Natoli continued, waving a sausage roll in one hand as she spoke. "Like the coke carts at the big iron-smelting works. The only problem is that takes a lot of metal, so where do we get all that metal? And if you used cut stone, it would wear out rapidly from the wheels. Every time you solve a problem you bring up twenty more." But she didn't look particularly discouraged. "The point is, we know we can use large versions of this in places where windmills don't work and there isn't any water for water mills. We can use the waste heat to heat houses, or even the Palace. Wouldn't that be a sight!"

"Wouldn't it be a sight as you get in everyone's way digging up the Palace and grounds to lay all your pipe," An'desha pointed out sardonically. He pushed a fall of his long hair back from his forehead, showing his pale eyes crinkled in smile lines. "I can't see the Queen holding still for that! Especially not in the foreseeable future."

"Oh, I didn't mean right now," Natoli said airily, waving her hands in the air. "I just meant eventually. After all, it's not as if it hasn't been done. Think of the mess it made when all the new indoor privies and the hot and cold water supplies were put in. That was in the first couple of years of Selenay's reign, and I don't hear anyone complaining about it now!"

"A point," An'desha acknowledged. "I'd like to see you folk find some other source of heat than a fire, however. Fires are not very clean."

"Some magical source, maybe?" Karal said without thinking, and blushed when every eye on the table turned toward him. "I don't really know what I'm talking about, I'm just speculating—" he stammered. "Don't pay any attention to me, I'm just babbling."

"But your babbling makes some sense," Natoli responded, her eyes lighting up with enthusiasm. "A practical application of magic! That might be the answer to my chief objection as well."

The talk turned to possible magical sources of heat then, and An'desha held center stage as he speculated on how this might be accomplished in such a way that the mage would not actually have to be there to make the source work. It led into talk of binding magical creatures, small ones that thrived on fuel of one kind or another, and it was clear to Karal that An'desha was in his element. Karal was able to watch Natoli to his heart's content, as her face grew animated during the heat of the discussion, and she tossed her hair with impatience or excitement.

"So," An'desha said, as the door of the Compass Rose closed behind them, shutting off part of the noise, which had not in the least abated. "Feeling rested and relaxed?"

Karal paused and took stock of himself and blinked in surprise. "Why—yes!"

An'desha laughed. "Good. That was what I hoped would happen. Now are you wondering why I pulled you away after Natoli left?" He started off down the street in a fast walk, and Karal followed.

"A little," he admitted, sniffing in the cold and damp, "Though I must admit once she left I got a bit bored when they all started talking about mathematics and drawing on the tables again."

"Because you and I are going to go to the ekele. Firesong is up to his eyebrows in some discussion involving the Tayledras, the Shin'a'in, and k'Leshya at Haven, so he won't be there. I'm not taking part because I've been told I'm not Shin'a'in enough to satisfy the envoy. He doesn't like halfbreeds."

"Hmph, I'm not surprised. He seems to dislike all sorts of people," Karal growled. "Well, I don't like him, so we're all even."

Karal walked on in silence, seeming lost in thought, then turned to An'desha. "What did you have in mind when we get there?

"You are going to soak in the hot spring, and you are going to have a nice, relaxing cup of Shin'a'in tea, and then you are going to go to your suite and sleep." It was too dark to read An'desha's face, but his voice told Karal he was not going to be argued with. "As I recall, you made the same prescription for me a time or two. and turnabout is fair play."

"So is that why you have turned into my counselor?" Karal asked, and he wasn't entirely being facetious. The events of this afternoon and evening had proved to him that An'desha had achieved an inner peace that he found enviable.

If only I could be so sure of things again!

"The turnabout? Oh, it is a part of it," An'desha said, with serene warmth in his voice. "You have done good things for me, with good reason and without. You have been kind when you could have been neutral. There is a saying from the Plains: Every gift carries the hope for an exchange."

Karal mulled that over, but his thoughts about the Shin'a'in proverb were eclipsed by marveling over An'desha's calm.

That was part of the problem he had with the entire situation. He was not only acting as envoy, but as a priest—and a priest should be utterly sure of himself and his beliefs. Either a priest or an envoy should be sure and calm.

But he was being required to determine what was heresy for those of his faith here in Valdemar, and that was where his beliefs were collapsing around his ears. How could he make a judgment on what was heretical, when he had seen evidence with his own eyes that what he "knew" was the Truth was only truth in a relative sense?

Take the very existence of An'desha's Star-Eyed Goddess, for instance. For a Sun-priest, there was one God, and one only, and that was Vkandis—yet he had ample proof that was beyond refutation that the Star-Eyed existed and ruled Her people right alongside Vkandis Sunlord.

To even think that was rankest heresy by the standards of the Faith as he was taught it. But he had been taught the old ways and things had changed drastically since.

He'd already deferred the decision once, which had only made both parties angry at him. He suspected that this was the reason why he was being confronted by all the heads of religion in Valdemar. They weren't going to accept a deferred decision again.

Perhaps in his new-found confidence and serenity An'desha could act as his adviser as he had once acted as An'desha's.

"Would you mind listening to a problem of mine?" he asked, as they walked side-by-side up the deserted street, toward the Palace.

"You listened to mine often enough," An'desha replied. "It only seems fair. I won't promise an answer, but maybe I can help anyway."

He explained the predicament he was in; his own uncertainty, and his unwillingness to label anything heresy. "I don't know now if there is a wrong or right, in anything. And I am put in the position of being the person that is supposed to know! It all seems so relative now," he ended plaintively.

But An'desha only chuckled. "If I were to turn and stick a knife in you now, that wouldn't be 'relatively' good or bad, would it?"

He had to laugh. "Hardly!"

"Work from that, then," An'desha suggested. "You've been reading all those old books that Master Ulrich brought with him, the ones written back before the Sunlord's priesthood went wrong. You have a fair idea what was considered heretical then, don't you? And what's more, since you have those books, and since Solaris approves of them, you can cite sources to prove the position you're taking, right?"

Fog rose from the damp cobblestones all around them, but it seemed that the fog in his own mind was lifting. "Well, yes, literally chapter and verse. That's true," he said slowly. "I think the problem is that I know what I wanted to say, but I couldn't think of a way to make it stick."

"You probably still won't be able to make it stick," An'desha warned. "The people you're dealing with are like that new Shin'a'in envoy that replaced Querna; hidebound and dead certain they're right."

"True, but if they don't like my decision, I can tell them to appeal to Solaris, and as long as I follow what Master Ulrich was trying to show me, I think she'll back me." His cheer was mounting by the moment. "I don't much care if they don't like me afterward. There are so many people in Valdemar now who don't like me that a few more won't matter."

"That's the spirit!" An'desha applauded. "Good for you. Now are you ready for that soak?"

"I'm soaked in trouble anyway, why not add hot water?"

"Careful with that kind of talk," An'desha grinned. "You'll make it start raining again."

* * *

Karal's backside and face were both numb. His shoulders ached; he maintained an expression of calm interest, but inside, he was yawning. All we do is talk! he thought, taking a covert glance around the Grand Council table, and seeing nothing but the same expressions of stolid self-importance he had seen for days. We never actually do anything, we just talk about it!

The Valdemaran "Grand Council" was new; an institution formed so that Queen Selenay could attend to the problems that were strictly internal to Valdemar in a forum where every envoy, Guild functionary, Master artificer, and their collective secretaries did not feel urged to put in their own bits of advice. She had been getting nothing done, and every busybody in her kingdom had been privy to Valdemar's internal problems. The old Council Chamber had gone back to the use for which it had been built, and one of the larger rooms in the Palace, formerly a secondary Audience Chamber for the reception of large parties, had been turned over to the new function.

Of course, everyone involved had his own ideas on protocol, which meant that the Queen and her advisers had to come up with some seating arrangement that would suit everyone. A new table had been constructed in the form of a hollow square with one side open, like an angular horse shoe. Around it were placed enough seats for everyone who might conceivably want to have a hand in the situation with the Empire, the mage-storms, or both. The table sat squarely in the middle of the otherwise empty room, and on the platform that had once been the dais was a huge strategic map of Valdemar, Hardorn, Karse, Rethwellan, the Tayledras lands to the west, the Dhorisha Plains, and south as far as Ceejay. The gryphons, when they attended, actually sat (or rather, lounged) in the hollow interior of the table, with the rest spaced evenly along the outside. No one sat at the "head" of the table, for there was no head or foot, and so everyone could feel he was equal, superior, or whatever his pride demanded.

Although the room was well-provided with lights, both along the walls and from a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, it was cold. Two ceramic-tiled stoves, one at either end of the room, had to make shift to heat the whole place. The white marble floor and white-painted walls and ceiling added to the impression of cold. Karal always dressed warmly for these meetings, and kept the pages busy refilling his cup of hot tea which he mostly used to warm his hands. Nor was he the only person to resort to such measures to keep warm; he noted that Firesong actually had the forethought to bring a hand warmer and a heated brick which he put inside a special footstool. He cast envious glances now and again at both, as he wriggled his toes in an attempt to keep them from turning into little blocks of ice.

Prince Daren acted as the Queen's voice on the Grand council, leaving Selenay free to rule her country and not sit in on meeting after endless meeting. Meetings at which, it seemed to Karal, very little was accomplished.

That's not fair, actually, Karal thought, looking around again. No one has ever done anything like this before. We're all having to come to terms with each other, and that takes time. We have to learn to work together before anything can happen.

All this, obviously, meant that the Seneschal, the Lord Marshal, the heads of the three Circles, and any other Valdemaran official that normally sat on the Council often ended up attending double meetings when the Grand Council met. And any other Valdemaran functionary who wanted to look important (or actually felt he might be needed) helped to round out the field. This, of course, meant that every single meeting since the breakwater went up consisted of one person after another pontificating on how he and his special interests had been affected, what would probably happen next, and what he thought should be done about it. Typically, those with the most important and relevant information generally said the least.

There should be a way of cutting this nonsense out. It's taking up time. Maybe a maximum word count, enforced by cudgel?

Karal really would have preferred to be off doing something constructive, even if all he was doing was making copies of energy-flow maps for the artificers. At least that would be accomplishing more than just sitting here trying not to fall asleep, a job that grew more difficult as the time crawled by.

So far today, at least eight people had made long speeches that were only variations on "as far as my people can tell, this breakwater business is working and everything is back to normal," and the one currently droning on was the ninth. He was the particular representative of dairy farmers—and only dairy farmers—and they had already heard from grain growers, shepherds, vegetable farmers, fruit growers, professional hunters, the fisher folk of Lake Evendim, and poultry farmers. Each of them had gone on at length about why his particular group had suffered more than any other from the mage-storms, though what this was supposed to accomplish, Karal didn't know.

Why can't the farming folk find one person to represent them all? And why can't he be someone who'll give us hard information instead of whining?

He cupped his hands a little tighter around his tea and resolved to find out where Firesong had gotten the footstool with the heated brick in it.

They can tell the people who sent them that their complaints and troubles are on record, I suppose, he thought vaguely. As if that makes any difference to this group. I suppose it must make people feel better to know that someone at least knows that they are having hard times. It would have been much more useful for all these farmers and hunters and herders to have compared the damages this year with those of previous bad years—during the time when Ancar's magic in Hardorn was causing ruinous weather all over, for instance. Then all the foreign envoys would know how things stood here in comparison to the way they should be, and could offer advice or even help-in-trade if it looked as if help really was needed. They could all compare notes on the damages across the region, and see if there were any differences. The plans being worked out by Master Levy's artificers and the allied mages were all based on information mainly gathered in Valdemar. They were all assuming that patterns in Valdemar were similar to patterns outside Valdemar. But what if they weren't?

He'd tried suggesting that, but the people he'd suggested it to had said that gathering such information was going to take a great deal of time, and could he justify such an undertaking? He'd tried to point out why it would be useful, but no one seemed to find his arguments convincing.

Finally, the man stopped droning. It took Karal and the others a few moments to realize that he had actually ended his speech, rather than simply pausing for breath as he had so many times before.

Prince Daren nobly refrained from sighing with relief, as he consulted his agenda. Though still as handsome as a statue of a hero, the Prince was showing his age more and more lately; there were almost as many silver hairs among his gold as An'desha sported. The stress of the past several years was beginning to tell on both of Valdemar's monarchs. There were strain lines around his eyes that matched the ones around the Queen's. Like the Queen, since he was also a Herald, he wore a variation on the Herald's Whites.

"Herald Captain Kerowyn, I believe you are next," the Prince-Consort said, and although the gentlemen and ladies now seated about this square table were too well-trained to show relief in their expressions, people did begin sitting up a little straighter, and taking postures that showed renewed interest. Kerowyn at least was not going to stand there and drone about nothing; whatever she reported was going to be short, to the point, and relevant.

Kerowyn, who was the same age as Daren, nevertheless remained ageless. Her hair, which she always wore in a single long braid down her back, was already such a light color that it was impossible to tell which hairs were blonde and which were silver. And any new stress lines she had acquired would be hidden by the weathered and tanned state of her complexion, for Kerowyn was not one to sit behind a desk and "command" from a distance. She had begun her military career as a mercenary scout in the field, and that was where she felt most at home. There was not a single pennyweight of extra flesh on that lean, hard body, and every Herald-trainee knew to his sorrow that she was in better physical shape than any of them. When she wasn't drilling her own troops, she was drilling the Herald-trainees in weapons' work, and heaven help the fool who thought that because she was a woman, she would be an easy opponent. She had been sporadically training Karal, and he knew at firsthand just how tough she was.

She stood up to immediate and respectful silence from everyone at the table, Valdemaran or not.

With one hand on her hip and the other holding a sheaf of papers, she cleared her throat carefully. "Well, I don't need to go into the obvious. What we're calling the breakwater is obviously working. The mages tell me that what's happening is that rather than reflecting the waves of force as they come at us to somewhere else, this business they've set up is breaking them up and absorbing them to some extent. That's good news for us, but Hardorn is still getting the full force of the waves."

Chuckles met that, and she frowned. "As a strategist, I don't think that's particularly good for us, my friends. If the situation in there was bad before—and it was—it's worse now. We may see the Imperial forces in Hardorn getting desperate, and desperate people are inclined to desperate acts. I might remind you that they may be blaming us for all these mage-storms. They've made one attempt to break up our Alliance. They may decide to act more directly."

The pleased looks around the table evaporated. Even handicapped, the Imperial Army was vastly larger than anything the Alliance could put together, and everyone here knew it. The members of the alliance had been fighting the renegade King Ancar of Hardorn, separately and together, for years before the Eastern Empire came onto the scene, and their forces were at the lowest ebb they had ever been. The attrition rate had been terrible on both sides, for Ancar had been perfectly willing to conscript anything and anyone and throw his conscripted troops into the front lines under magical coercions to fight. He had intended to take Valdemar and Karse, even if he had to do it over a pile of his own dead a furlong high. Ancar was gone now, but....

"Now, one way to make sure they don't come after us is to take the fight to them," Kerowyn continued matter-of-factly. "You know what they say about the best defense being a good offense. My people tell me that the Imperials pulled everything back and they've concentrated in one spot, around a little town called Shonar. Looks as if they are making a permanent garrison there. That makes them a nicely concentrated target. Their morale is bad, and it looks as if they've been cut off from resupply and communication with the Empire They depend on magic; right now, they don't have any. My best guess is that they're doing their damnedest just to get dug in to survive the winter. The questions I have, for all of you, are—do you think we should take advantage of that, and are you prepared to back a decision to go on the offensive when that means taking what troops we have right into Hardorn?"

Half of the people at the table began talking at once; the other half sat there with closed expressions, clearly thinking hard about what Kerowyn had just said. It was fairly typical that the people who had begun babbling were the ones who were the least important and the least knowledgeable so far as a decision like this one was concerned—representatives of farmers and herders, tradesmen and Guilds, priests and the like. The rest—the actual envoys, the Lord Marshal, the Seneschal—were the silent ones, and Karal was among them.

On the other hand, he was inclined to think—why not? Why shouldn't we hit these people while they are in trouble? The Shin'a'in envoy, Jarim shena Pretara'sedrin, began to speak as Karal was considering that.

"This is our chance," he said fiercely. "Let a few bad winter storms take their toll, then let us strike while they are freezing and starving! Let us wipe them from the face of the world! If we destroy this army now, the Empire will never again dare to send a force against us. Let us take our revenge, and let it be a thorough one!"

And for once, on the surface and at first impulse, Karal was inclined to agree with him. They murdered Ulrich, he thought angrily. They murdered Ulrich and poor Querna, they injured Darkwind and Treyvan and others, and they didn't even come at us as honest enemies! They sent an agent with vile little magic weapons to assassinate whoever happened to be in the way, with no warning and no provocation. Don't they deserve to be squashed like bugs for that? Don't they deserve to be treated the way they treated us—as insignificant and not even worth a fair fight? Doesn't Ulrich's blood cry out for revenge?

But it was that last thought that stopped him because revenge was the last thing Ulrich would have wanted. What was being proposed meant that vengeance was enacted, not upon the perpetrator, but upon people—soldiers—who had no idea what evil had been wrought here. Ulrich had once commanded demons—and gladly renounced that power when Solaris decreed it anathema. The demons were the next thing to mindless, and too often, like a hail of arrows loosed at random, they killed those who were innocent along with those who were guilty.

These soldiers, far from home and desperate, were not the real enemy. The real enemy was the one who had commanded those magical weapons, and the one who had sent the assassin. They had caught the original assassin, after all. What would be the point of going after anyone else now—unless, perhaps, they in their turn specifically targeted the commander of these forces, assuming he had been the one who had ordered the assassin to strike in the first place.

Others joined Jarim in calling for action, or opposed him, cautioning that it might be better to let the full force of winter take its toll before acting. But Karal sat and clasped cold fingers before him, wondering what had happened that he was no longer able to see things involving humans as day or night, good, or evil.

He knew when it had begun; something had changed when he entered the barrier at the border with Iftel, and it had continued to affect him in the days he had spent recovering from the experience. He had the feeling, always humming in the background like the blood in his veins, that he had been welcomed by something extraordinary. Karal lived in a time of wonder and strangeness, yet the feeling he had was not, at any time, that of being a spectator. He was a part of it all, an active player in whatever game the fates set the board for, and that feeling itself was beyond anything he'd prepared for.

I can't help it; present me with a situation, and I have to think about both sides of it. I can try to suppress it, but I cannot shut off the way I think. Once knowledge is gained, there's no going back to ignorance. I think about what the other feels. I can't stop it, and I don't think Vkandis Sunlord, Solaris, or Altra would want me to. Or Ulrich, far away in Vkandis' arms.

Ironically enough, it had been Ulrich himself who had planted the seeds of this change, back when he and his mentor had first crossed into Valdemar. Ulrich had asked a slow but steady progression of perfectly logical questions that had ultimately forced him to see his former enemies as people, and not as a faceless horde. Because of Ulrich's patient coaching, he now knew, at the deepest level of pure reaction, that the impersonal and evil army of nameless demons that lay across the border of Karse was nothing of the sort. It was Heralds and Companions, farmers and townsfolk, soldiers of the Queen and ordinary citizens; people very like those he had known all his life.

Now he could no longer see an enemy impersonally. The great and mindless "they" were nothing more nor less than people, and he saw them that way. While the others spoke of wiping out the Imperial Army, he saw ordinary fighting men, suffering unseasonable cold and demoralizing doubt, wondering if they would ever see home again. He even imagined faces, for the faces of fighters came to look much alike after a few seasons in the field: tired, unshaven, with lines of suppressed fear and dogged determination about the eyes and mouth.

"They" were just doing their jobs. They didn't know anything about Valdemar. Conditions in Hardorn had been so dismal when they first crossed the border, they had been welcomed as liberators. Ancar had abused his people to the point that they were happy to see even a foreign invader, if that meant that Ancar would be deposed. Now the Imperials were probably wondering why the welcome they'd gotten had turned so sour. Things they had come to depend on were no longer working, and by now word must have filtered down that no one had any contact with their headquarters back home. Strange and misshapen beasts had attacked them, and they had seen a "weapon" at work that no one understood.

If any of them had the slightest notion that their superiors had assassins working in Valdemar, a few of them might even be horrified. Certainly, since the professional soldier generally had the deepest contempt for the covert operator, they probably would be a bit disgusted. But it was unlikely that any of them knew or even guessed what had happened in Valdemar's Court, that one of their leaders had assassinated perfectly innocent people.

So why should perfectly "innocent" soldiers suffer for the action of what was probably a single man?

They were already under more privation than they had any right to anticipate.

They're far from home and all the things they know. They have no idea if they will ever find their way back again. They may not even be able to retreat in a conventional way. They must be afraid—how could they not be afraid? And winter is coming, more mage-storms. The storms created some terrifying creatures here before we built the breakwater. What can they possibly be making in Hardorn?

Since he was alone and far from home himself, he couldn't help but have some fellow feeling for them. Perhaps it was foolish, but there it was.

For that matter, it was only presumption on their part that the assassination orders originated with someone commanding the forces in Hardorn. There was no real reason to assume that was actually true.

After all, Talia and Selenay's old nemesis, Hulda, had been getting her orders directly from the Imperial capital, possibly even from one of Emperor Charliss' personal spymasters. Charliss was accustomed to sending in operatives who worked at an extreme distance, for with the magics the Empire used routinely, distance was no object. So who was to say that the assassin hadn't been sent directly by Charliss or someone just below him, and had nothing to do with the forces in Hardorn at all?

The Imperial Army itself had never done anything overtly against Valdemar; they had only moved to take over a disorganized and demoralized country after its own ruler had been killed—

—by Valdemarans. Valdemar assassins, not to put too fine a point upon it.

Don't we have trouble enough right now without adding to it by attacking the Imperials directly? We should be concentrating on the next step after the breakwater, not trying to get an army of our own halfway into Hardorn to attack someone we don't even know is our enemy!

The general din seemed to have died down a bit, and he saw an opening. With shaking hands, which he disguised by keeping them clasped on the table in front of him, he spoke up.

"I'm not certain going after them is a good idea," he said quietly. "We should be concentrating all of our effort on the mage-storms; the breakwater isn't going to hold forever—in fact, if the storms change their pattern drastically, it won't hold at all. The Imperials haven't done anything we can prove, and they are going to have all they can take with the results of the mage-storms over there. Why don't we just leave them alone, at least for now, and see what happens?" Stunned silence met his suggestions, and he added into the deathly quiet, "Our resources are limited, and things might get even worse. Who knows? They have so many mages with them—they know things we don't—they might turn out to be valuable allies."

"What?" Jarim sprang to his feet, his face scarlet with outrage. Karal felt his heart stop, then start up again, and he knew that he had gone pale by the cold and stiff way his face felt. "Are you mad? Or are you so much of a coward that you won't even face what these Imperial jackals have done to you? They slew your mentor, your envoy! Are you a fool, boy? Or—are you a traitor?" He put one hand on his knife hilt and drew the blade with a single swift motion. "Those assassin blades somehow mysteriously never touched you! Foul piece of sketi—have you been the traitor in our midst all along? By the Star-Eyed, I swear I—"

Karal kept himself from shrinking back only by iron will and the knowledge that Daren and the others wouldn't let Jarim actually do anything to him. Darkwind rose malevolently and grabbed the Shin'a'in's wrist in a grip of steel, roaring to drown out whatever Jarim was going to say.

"Stop that, you fool! Where are your senses! Drawing steel in the Grand Council, threatening the Karsite Envoy, are you trying to break the Alliance apart all by yourself?" He shook the man's arm, rattling the startled Shin'a'in's teeth. Karal was impressed; Darkwind did not give the impression of being stronger than any other normal man. Evidently there was a great deal about this Hawkbrother that was not obvious.

The Shin'a'in was so startled that he dropped the knife, which clattered to the table. Firesong snatched it up before Jarim could reach for it.

"The boy is only pointing out alternatives—as is appropriate. He is a priest, he is supposed to think beyond the obvious, and he is supposed to suggest peaceful possibilities rather than ones involving war!" Darkwind turned to glare at everyone around the table, and some of the representatives of other gods had the grace to look chagrined, since they had been doing nothing of the sort. In fact, they had been calling for war as enthusiastically as Jarim. "He is absolutely right; in regard to what has happened here, we have no proof as to the origin. We have speculation, but no proof. For all we know, our real enemy could be someone we are not even aware of, someone who set all of this up to make it look like the Empire was the perpetrator!"

"Oh, that's hardly likely," the Lord Marshal scoffed. "Who would this nebulous enemy be? Some hypothetical evil shaman from the North, beyond the Ice Wall?"

"Not likely, I will grant you, but possible—and we have not even discussed the possibility. I remind you, before any of you accuse our own Council members of duplicity, that outside influences should be the first consideration. A history-proven means of destroying vital alliances is to sow dissension among its members, from outside, by duplicity!" Darkwind met the Lord Marshal's eyes squarely, and it was the older man who dropped his gaze. "Furthermore, as a mage, I concur with his priority. You've all accepted the breakwater as the solution to the problem of the mage storms, but it was never meant to be more than a stopgap measure to gain us time."

"Now that is completely true and irrefutable, Firesong drawled, toying with the Shin'a'in dagger. "Forgive me, Herald Captain, but this breakwater of ours is rather like its namesake—and the more storms that come to wash away at it, the faster it will erode. It is more like a levee made of sand than one made of stone. I know it seems to you as if this is a good time to strike at a possible menace, but believe me as a mage of some talent—they will have all they can handle and more as the mage-storms wreak havoc in Hardorn. If they are very, very lucky, the monsters that are conjured up will be stopped by walls and enough arrows. If they are not—" He shrugged. "—well, let me remind you that the breakwater may stop mage-storms, but it is no barrier against hungry creatures capable of decimating an army. What comes to dine on them might well move in to dine on us before all is said and done. As mages and artificers—" he bowed ironically to Master Levi "—we should be searching for the next level of protection against the storms. As military leaders, you should be searching for ways to hold off whatever might come at us through the Imperial Army. The likelihood is that, if you do not, it may be our Alliance that will be smashed like a particularly inconvenient bug."

He held the dagger out to the sullen Shin'a'in, hilt first; Darkwind released the man's wrist, and Jarim took the dagger and thrust it back into the sheath. He sat down again, his face still rebellious.

Karal drew a breath of relief; at least this crisis was over, for the moment anyway. Kerowyn had simply stood there through all of it, her own expression a study in passivity.

Finally, she spoke. "On the whole," she said carefully, "I must admit that more energy should be put into finding another solution to the mage-storm than anything else. I wanted to point out the possibility that the Imperial Army might be vulnerable at this time. I do not want anyone to think that I am certain of that. After all, as Karal rightly pointed out, nothing is certain but those facts that we can verify for ourselves. He is also correct in pointing out that a great deal of what we think we know is only speculation. Probability is not fact, and I for one prefer not to send troops into battle while the home fronts are unprotected."

She sat down amid heavy silence. Prince Daren cleared his throat. "In that case," he said, with remarkable aplomb, considering that moments before, one of his allies had been stopped just short of declaring blood-feud on another, "Perhaps the next to speak should be Darkwind k'Sheyna."

Darkwind seized the verbal "ball" that had been thrown to him, and proceeded to take over the meeting. The Hawkbrother did not have his bird with him, but he stood as if he was so accustomed to the weight of the forest gyre on his shoulder that he was always ready for it. He, too, sported the all-white hair of a Tayledras Adept, for he had been Elspeth's original teacher of magic, before he became her partner and beloved. He was a typical Tayledras; strongly handsome, rather than the sculptured beauty of Firesong. He tended to much less flamboyant clothing than his fellow Hawkbrother, but when he spoke, it was with authority, and people listened.

Karal simply sat very still during most of the rest of it. It was all to the good that Darkwind managed to get across the fact that the breakwater was temporary, and get the attention of the allies centered on that rather than anything else, though he did not seem to Karal to be getting the urgency of the situation across to them. But Karal could not ignore the smoldering glances of Jarim, or the dismissive glances of many of the rest of the people at the table. Once again, his youth was speaking against him. People assumed that because he was young he was inexperienced. And Jarim clearly assumed that because he was not ready to rush out and slaughter every Imperial that came his way, he was, at the least, a coward.

Well, Darkwind and Firesong seem to think I've got a point. Maybe I ought to work through them instead of trying to make my points myself.

But if he did that, he'd just look ineffectual, and how would that serve Karse?

When the Grand Council broke up, it was with very little accomplished and nothing really settled.

As usual.

He returned to his suite feeling as if he had failed in his duty.

As he closed the door, shoulders slumping beneath his elaborate black robes, a patch of golden sunlight in the middle of the floor rose up to greet him.

:You look as if you could use a friend,: Altra observed, as what had been golden light resolved itself into a huge cat, cream colored, with reddish-gold mask, paws, and tail—and vivid blue eyes. :Did the meeting go badly?:

Karal managed to dredge up a ghost of a smile and sagged into a chair as Altra padded across the floor and sat regally down at his feet. At least it was comfortably warm in here, with the sunlight streaming in the windows and a fire in the fireplace. The Valdemarans took good care of their guests, and sometimes it seemed as if the one commodity that Valdemarans treasured above all others was warmth. He had a suite of three rooms, including his own bathroom—not the same suite he had shared with Ulrich, which would have been too painful to return to. That suite had been given, ironically enough, to Jarim. "It didn't end badly—but if you were paying any attention to the meeting, you'll know I was within a hair of having Shin'a'in blood-feud declared against me."

The Firecat blinked. :I was eavesdropping a bit, and I must say you're certainly talented. No Sun-priest has had Shin'a'in blood-feud declared against him in the entire history of Karse.:

Karal just sighed at this display of Altra's rather sardonic sense of humor. "It's not funny, cat. I guess the important thing is that this all proves that I am in far past my depth, here, and I might as well admit it. It's one thing to have Solaris send a piece of paper making me the envoy, but it's quite another to get people to accept me as the envoy."

Restlessness overcame his lassitude and weariness. He lurched out of his chair and began pacing. "I'm too young, I'm inexperienced, and if I was a place-holder, neither of those things would matter. But I'm not just a cipher. I'm supposed to be making decisions here; I'm supposed to be representing Karse's best interests. But how can I possibly do that when I'm young enough to be the son of half the people in the room, and the grandson of the other half?"

He was so frustrated and so very, very tired! His repressed emotions boiled over and came pouring out of him in a torrent of impassioned words. At least Altra was listening, rather than cutting him off. "The worst thing is, I know I'm too young, and that shows, too! Altra, these responsibilities are driving me mad! I don't want to sound as if I'm whining, but I am not suited to this, I thought this would only be for a few weeks—that Solaris would send someone else, someone the others would listen to. When we were trying to catch the assassin, it was reasonable to have me as the envoy. It was even reasonable when I was only interacting with the people on Selenay's internal Council—after all, Darkwind and Elspeth and a couple of the others know that I have a good idea now and then and are willing to listen to me because they know me. But now I'm supposed to be dealing with all of these other allies, and they all look at me and see a—a child!" He turned toward the Firecat and held out his hands, imploring Altra to see the dilemma he was in. "Altra, I can't do the task I was given, and there is nothing that is going to make that possible, short of aging me twenty years overnight. I'm doing my best, but this is akin to asking a blind man to sort beads by color. Trying to do what no one will let me do is going to drive me insane without helping Karse!"

Altra had remained silent during this entire outburst. When he finally subsided, Karal bitterly expected the Firecat to deliver a crisp lecture on growing some backbone. After all, that was what he had done on similar occasions in the past.

But Altra did nothing of the sort. He curled his tail tightly around his legs, and sat so quietly that not even a hair moved. His eyes had grown very thoughtful and were looking far away, to some place Karal could not even begin to imagine. His introspection was so deep, Karal wondered if he was actually communing with something—or Some one—else.

After waiting a few moments for a reply, Karal took his seat again, dropping heavily into his padded armchair with a thud. Altra did not seem to notice.

Huh. This is different. He's never acted like this before....

Then, suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, the Firecat leaped straight up into the air—

—and vanished into the patch of sunlight he had appeared out of.

"Oh, now that's an informative answer," Karal growled to the empty air in disgust. "Thanks a lot!"

* * *

Somewhere out there, Natoli and the others were isolating energy patterns, An'desha was helping them analyze the patterns, and Master Levy and his mathematicians were plotting courses. He suspected that Firesong's warning about monsters being created in Hardorn had been taken to heart, and Kerowyn's folk were inventing monsters and ways to deal with them. Somewhere in this very Palace, others were getting actual work done. Somewhere out in Haven, or beyond, artificers were trying to find a way of getting people and supplies in and out of an area quickly, perhaps involving some of Natoli's beloved steam machines.

And I am sitting here waiting for yet another Grand Council meeting. He sighed glumly and then sat up a little straighter as he realized that the Shin'a'in envoy, who had just entered the room himself, was heading, not for his own seat, but straight for Karal.

Oh, glory. Now what? A challenge to personal combat?

He made himself smile, and rose in courtesy as Jarim reached him. "Greetings, sir." Now what do I say? "I trust you realize we are still on the same side?" Or— "Are you still desirous of examining my liver at close range? I fear I cannot oblige you—" He settled for a neutral and polite, "How can I serve you?"

"You can serve me, Envoy, by accepting an apology," the Shin'a'in said brusquely—and grudgingly. But at least he was saying it, which was an improvement. "I overreacted yesterday. My people are protective of their own."

And mine are not? Is that your implication? "I understand, sir," he replied smoothly. "Please, you must understand that I am trying to think of the best use of our admittedly limited resources. I am trying to suggest what is useful for the Alliance as a whole. Your people never encountered the armies of Ancar of Hardorn. My country and Valdemar are low on fighting men and the wherewithal to supply them; your people are mighty warriors, but they do not send folk off the Plains very often, and they would be at a bad disadvantage. The Hawkbrothers are no use as an offensive military force, and Rethwellan has sent all it can afford. I frankly would rather that the Imperials were slowly whittled away by magic-born monsters than that any fighter of the Alliance perish in ridding us of them. We must survive the mage-storms ourselves, after all, and—"

"Yes, yes, I see your point," Jarim interrupted. "But it should be obvious that we are going to have to eliminate these interlopers while we have the chance. They have a long history of conquest, and no border has ever stopped them before. It is pure folly to think that they will allow anything to stop them now, save such a fierce resistance that it is clear even to them that they have met their match in us! The only way to do that is to strike now, strike hard, and remove every trace of their forces from Hardorn. Then and only then will the Empire respect us enough to let us alone!"

He was getting wound up again, and nothing Karal had said had made any difference to him. His words said "we" but it was obvious to Karal that what he wanted was personal revenge on the Empire for daring to murder a Goddess Sworn Shin'a'in.

By now most of the others had arrived, and all of the Grand Council were listening closely to this exchange, obviously waiting to see how he would answer.

But any answer other than the one that Jarim wanted—full agreement—was only going to start another argument. So instead of replying directly to Jarim's statement, he turned to Elspeth, who happened to be nearest to him.

"How long do the mages believe the breakwater will remain intact?" he asked earnestly. "Has anyone an estimate?" It was one question that no one had asked yet—but it was important, because an answer might make it clear that there was no time for personal vengeance—or, indeed, any revenge at all.

"Good question," the Princess replied, arching an eyebrow at Darkwind and Firesong, who edged closer at her signal. "Do either of you have an answer—or even a guess?"

"I would prefer to err conservatively," Firesong replied—earnestly, for once, rather than flippantly. He cast a glance at Karal that looked appreciative. "I would not trust it to hold for more than four months at the most. Through the winter—perhaps. Not much beyond."

"I would give it until summer, but that is certainly no more than six months away at best," Darkwind said, nodding. "Now, given that winter fighting is difficult at best and suicidal at worst, that means we will lose the breakwater before we have any chance at attacking the Imperials."

Karal noticed that Prince Daren was also giving him a look of both appraisement and approval. Evidently he had impressed the Prince-Consort. Jarim looked startled; his eyes widened with shock. "I thought that it would last longer than that," he objected. "You only just put it up!"

Firesong shrugged. "The breakwater loses a bit more of itself with every storm, and the storms are coming more and more frequently. There is a mathematical progression to them. We told you that. The erosion is accelerating. Pity, but we knew when we set it up that all we were doing was buying time, and we tried to make that as clear as possible to all of you."

Firesong can say that, and say it insolently, and get away with it. Jarim respects him; I think he might even be a little afraid of him. Today Firesong was wearing stark and unornamented black, a costume that accentuated both the gold of his Tayledras skin and the vivid silver-blue of his eyes—which only served to remind Jarim that the Hawkbrothers and the Shin'a'in were related—and the silver of his hair, the reminder of the power he wielded. Firesong was very good at choosing the best costume for the purpose. Today he was obviously in the mood for intimidation. It was a talent Karal wished he had.

Prince Daren stepped forward at that point, and took over the discussion. "Ladies and gentlemen, would you all take your seats? Firesong, would you repeat what you have been saying to everyone? This is important, very important, and I want to make sure there are no misunderstandings."

Daren went to his own seat and sat down, effectively beginning the meeting.

There was some shuffling about as people found their accustomed chairs, and Firesong not only stood up, he stood in the hollow center of the table where the gryphon Treyvan was, with one hand on the gryphon's shoulder. The gryphon twitched an ear-tuft a bit.

"Some of you were part of our earlier Council when we first learned how we could, temporarily, protect the Alliance lands and Iftel from the battering we were taking from the mage-storms," he said gravely. "This we did, and as you are all aware, it was successful. But it was still a temporary solution. Like a shoreline breakwater from which this protection takes its name, it absorbs the force of the waves of the mage-storm, but at a cost to itself. It is eroded, a little more with every battering that it takes. It will come down, collapsing under the repeated battering that it is subject to. Just because you are not feeling the effects of the mage-storms, that does not mean they are not continuing to move in on us. Even if you, yourselves, do not feel the force of one of these storms against your body, somebody out there will. They bring pain and misery and destruction. They are still coming at us, and the frequency and force are increasing as time goes on. We can measure this force, and we are doing so. I estimate that the breakwater will collapse in about four months' time, Darkwind gives it a slightly longer six months. Once again, all that we did was to buy our Alliance time to concoct another solution—one that could involve magic, since our magic is no longer being disrupted by the storms. We told you this was temporary at the time we did it, and we meant it."

That was just about the longest speech Firesong had ever made, and his words were given added impetus when the gryphon nodded with every salient point.

"I have ssseen the effectsss frrrom the airrr, frrriends. They leave the earrrth rrriven in placesss. We sshould be concentrating on the brrreakwaterrr'sss replacement," the gryphon added. "And, frrrankly, on what we can do if we cannot find a replacssement in time. If you thought thingsss werrre bad beforrre—"

He left the sentence unfinished, hanging in the air like the threat that it was.

Although Karal remembered distinctly that this point was made before anyone left Haven to set up the breakwater the first place, the fact that it was not the permanent solution still seemed to come as a complete surprise to many of the officials and envoys, Jarim among them.

"Well, why didn't you put a permanent solution in place?" snapped the head of the dairy farmers.

Firesong leveled a look at the man that should have melted him where he stood. "Oh, and you wanted us to wait to find one?" he asked, then continued. "This phenomenon was as new to us as it was to you; completely unprecedented, and we still don't fully understand it. As I recall, the mage-storms created a few killer cows before we put a halt to them," he said icily. "As it happens, we did the best we could at the time, to save the rest of you from as many of the effects as we could while we tried to put together something better. Would you rather we had let the storms rage across the landscape, turning more cattle into monsters?"

Perhaps the man had seen one of those "killer cows," for he paled and looked shamefaced. "Well, no—but—"

Someone else interrupted with another shouted accusation, which Firesong met with equally devastating wit and logic. Accusations and counter accusations flew for a moment, until it was finally driven home to even the most hardheaded at the table that the mages and artificers had not somehow "cheated" them—that they had done what they could at the time. "Like a barricade of sandbags holding back floodwaters," was Elspeth's analogy.

The uproar settled into silence, and it was Jarim who was bold enough to break it.

"Well, if this is only temporary, then what are we going to do?" he asked testily. "Have you people made any progress at all?"

What does he want us to say? They've already told him everything they know!

Darkwind sighed, and Elspeth patted his shoulder. "Well, candidly, not much," he said wearily. "We don't have enough facts yet—"

"Why not?" Jarim interrupted. "Why haven't you made any progress?"

"We have made plenty of progress! It is only magic we use, were you expecting miracles?" Firesong shot back testily. "If you want miracles, speak directly to a God. Or a Goddess." That last was a shrewd hit on Firesong's part, since Jarim, unlike Querna, was not Sworn to the Star-Eyed. He could pretend to no special communication with his deity, no more than any other Shin'a'in had.

Karal closed his eyes and just let the words wash over him, as Darkwind and Elspeth tried to put into nonmagical terms the things that they had learned, and Firesong added acidic rejoinders whenever someone questioned their progress. He was not a mage, and very little of what they said made sense to him. He could ask An'desha later, when he needed to write up a summation for Solaris.

Solaris. What was she doing, back home in Karse? Was she holding onto her leadership with the same firmness as before? Surely Vkandis Sunlord will keep Karse safe, no matter what, he told himself, and felt a twinge of guilt for such an unworthy thought. He was supposed to be thinking on a wider stage than just Karse; it was the welfare of the Alliance that was as important as Karse's welfare.

But Karse was where his interests lay, and it was Karse's interests he was representing. So was it so bad that he took comfort in the fact that Vkandis held His hand over His chosen land?

As a priest, he must believe that, anyway. To doubt was to doubt the word and the promises of Vkandis....

Except that He has said in His Writ that we must rely on the intelligence and wit that He gave us, that He protects us only in extremis. What if there is a solution here and we simply fail to reach it because we do not try hard enough? Would He still protect us then?

He felt his face grow cold and pale.

The uncertainty of it all was terrifying.

Oh, glory—what was happening to him? Now was he beginning to doubt even his own God?

What could he do, anyway? He was no mage; he knew next to nothing about magic or mathematics. He could only place his trust in others, in the hands and minds of those who did understand all of this. Elspeth and Darkwind, the gryphons, Firesong and An'desha, the mages of Rethwellan recruited by Kerowyn, the fledgling Herald-Mages of Valdemar trained by all of the others, the Priest-Mages of Karse; these were the folk that needed the help and guidance of Vkandis in their endeavor—and any other deity who happened to be interested. Perhaps the best thing he could do now was to pray. At least he understood how to do that.

Right now, he was just very, very tired... and very homesick. I would much rather be the secretary to anyone, even one of those rigid old sticks who disliked Ulrich and Solaris, than be the envoy myself. It's not that I don't want the responsibility—it's that I can't get the authority to take care of the responsibility.

So today, rather than try to make anyone listen to him, he just took notes whenever he caught something he understood. If I have a point I want raised, I'll write it down give it to Elspeth or Darkwind later, he decided. That's doing my duty by the Alliance as a whole, even if it isn't accomplishing anything for Karse.

Right now, that was the only solution he could think of.