Nine

Firesong burned with incoherent outrage. Someone was meddling with the power of his Heartstone! Granted, it wasn't much power being drained off, but still, no one had asked him for permission to tap into it directly, and he might need that power for his experiments!

He hadn't been able to get past Silverfox to visit the Heartstone chamber in days, but that didn't matter as far as keeping track of what was going on with the Stone itself. He could tell what was happening to the Stone even at a considerable distance, and he caught the unmistakable traces of meddling although he could not identify the meddler. It wasn't Elspeth or Darkwind; he knew the signatures of their power. It wasn't the gryphons either, although he hadn't thought either of them were keyed to it. There were no other Valdemaran mages powerful enough to tap into the Heartstone directly. Initially, he suspected the new mages from k'Leshya, but one by one he eliminated them as he ascertained that they had not been linked into the Stone yet either.

Finally, this very afternoon as he was waiting for Elspeth and Darkwind to arrive for a consultation in the hot spring, he realized who it was—who it must be. The obvious answer had been right in front of him, and yet it was not really obvious at all.

An'desha. It had to be An'desha.

He was an Adept, and it would not have been at all difficult for him to persuade Elspeth or Darkwind to give him access to the power of the Valdemar Stone. He had been helping the artificers and Karal with the practice and theory of magic. One or the other had probably come up with some idea that required so much power that only that of the Heartstone would do.

And, of course, none of them deigned to ask him about it!

Of course not. Why should they? I'm only the most experienced Adept here! An'desha may think he has experience, but all of it is tainted, slanted Falconsbane's way. What's more, he has no experience in any form of working with a Heartstone. But naturally, Karal has convinced him that he doesn't need me anymore. He thinks he has everything he needs to go sailing off on his own, I'm sure. He wasn't ready to work alone, and he wouldn't be ready for years! There is no way he could possibly be ready to work alone, especially not with Heartstone power! But Karal has probably told him the opposite—made him believe he doesn't need any help just when he needs it the most.

He paced back and forth angrily, forgetting that he was expecting visitors, as Aya fluttered and chirped in distress on his corner perch. The firebird began to send out false sparks with every flutter of his wings, trails of brilliant motes of light that cascaded from the bird's feathers like dust. Firesong ignored those signs of growing tension in favor of his own anger.

Rage seethed unchecked inside him. Karal! That's who's to blame for this! By the gods, I should do something about him, the interfering fool boy! The Alliance doesn't need him anymore, not with Solaris coming here. An'desha certainly doesn't need his brand of advice! Karal was the cause of all his problems—Karal was dangerous! He was meddling in things he couldn't even begin to understand, and he was encouraging An'desha to do the same. How long before he coaxed An'desha to try something more dangerous than just tapping into Heartstone power? How long before he encouraged An'desha to try to change it? Wasn't that how the k'Sheyna Heartstone had gone rogue in the first place? Pure primal rage colored everything scarlet, and his pulse sounded in his cars like the beat of a drummer gone mad. I ought to get rid of him—I have to get rid of him, before he ruins everything!

A high-pitched sound of ripping punctuated his murderous thoughts, and a decorative drape tore away from the wall. It shimmered with the side effects of the power he was projecting, falling slowly into progressively smaller shreds.

I should be doing that to Karal, that indolent, wet-eared whelp in diapers....

Firesong ground his teeth, letting the anger grow into a fury, not even concerned about the damage it was doing to his ekele. Let it happen! It didn't matter. The sound of splitting wood was reassuring—that was what breaking bones sounded like, and right now, wishing bodily mayhem on everyone who hadn't appreciated him enough felt very good.

The wooden legs of the serving table split lengthwise, in halves and thirds, twisting the surface this way and that before finally pitching sideways in collapse. The mugs and plates that slid off shattered before reaching the floor.

It is far and away past time I woke up!

At that moment, Aya gave an ear-shattering shriek of absolute terror, and a corner of the ekele burst into flame.

Firesong whirled, howling with anger at Aya's idiocy. The firebird leaped from his perch and fled into the corner to cower in fear under the last almost-intact table. Firesong snarled, deep in his throat, and willed the flames to go out—go out now! The fire only surged brighter when he directed his rage-edged power toward it. It engulfed the tattered wall hangings in a bright yellow sheet, producing an even thicker gout of smoke. He attempted to fling a blanket on the flames to smother them, and succeeded only in burning both his hands in the process. The pain only made his anger worse. He couldn't even think clearly.

Finally he clenched his burned fists and screamed at the fire.

"I said stop!"

The smoke belching out from the fire froze, and then receded back into the fire, flattening against it, smothering it, leaving the walls coated in the black of charred tinder. Finally, all that was left was a sweat-soaked, shaking Firesong, splinters of destroyed furniture, the haze of smoke, and a terror-filled firebird.

Firesong took a deep breath through his tight jaw, and his gaze darted around until he found Aya. He opened his scorched fists and lunged at Aya. The firebird fled.

He chased Aya around the room as the firebird hid under broken furniture, screaming in fear of Firesong. "You damned bird!" Firesong shrieked. "You miserable bird! How dare you!" His words degenerated into incoherent growls. Still shouting with anger that had built beyond his ability to control it, he cornered the firebird and prepared to strike Aya where he cowered, every feather shivering.

"Don't!"

The shout from the stairs made him pause—and that moment was all it took for Elspeth and Darkwind to bracket him.

"Firesong, that is your bondbird," the Tayledras scout said angrily. "Your. Bond. Bird. Are you out of your mind? Don't you realize that you are to blame? All he did was reflect what was wrong with you!"

"Get out!" Firesong spat. "This is my home and my bird, and I'll—"

"This isn't a home, it's a funeral pyre, Firesong. Strike Aya down, and you'll follow him," Darkwind warned, tapping a rhythm pattern with one foot that Elspeth quickly picked up—a pattern Firesong recognized vaguely from the containment spell they had all worked to confine the power of the rogue Heartstone of k'Sheyna. "I'm not bluffing, Firesong We can counter anything you can throw at us, and we'll drive it right back into your teeth. It won't be pretty."

For another long moment, he stood there with his hand upraised, like an executioner ready to drop the ax, staring into Darkwind's implacable eyes. Those blue eyes bored into his coldly, promising that the words were not a bluff. His friends were prepared to cut him down.

Prepared to cut me down....

Firesong's burned hand shook and then unclenched as the impact of what was happening sunk in.

Then the anger drained out of him as suddenly as if they had lanced a suppurating boil. He dropped his hand and stared at it, appalled.

"Oh, gods—" he whispered in disbelief. "Darkwind—what did I do? What was I going to do?"

What kind of a monster did I turn into? What was I thinking? The Heartstone isn't mine, An'desha has every right to follow his own path, and—Karal is as innocent as Aya. Aya. What is wrong with me? Aya, my bird, my bondbird…

Sudden and profound grief took the place of rage, flooding in to fill the void the loss of anger had left behind. His knees gave out and he dropped to the floor, sobbing. Darkwind and Elspeth held their positions, watching steadily. If they continued tapping that rhythm, Firesong could not hear it over his own crying.

Aya, my bird, my bondbird Aya... you didn't mean to, you were scared, I scared you, and I was going to....

Aya raised up from his cowering, just a little, and false sparks showered off him in bursts. The firebird stepped forward hesitantly, and slipped into Firesong's arms to cuddle against him, crooning softly. Firesong apologized to his oldest and dearest friend through his tears, rocking forward and back, losing all track of time.

What did I do... what have I done...?

All the world was hazy from the tears and the smoke, out of focus, out of mind. There was a slow-moving blur on his right, large and graceful, with a sweep of long black hair. Someone dropped down beside him, but it was not Darkwind nor Elspeth. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling them sting even worse, and looked up to find himself gazing into the compassionate and understanding eyes of—Silverfox?

It was Silverfox, whose eyes showed a soul more intricate than all the magic that Firesong claimed to understand and control. Firesong stared through streaks of soot-stained white hair, his arms full of trembling firebird.

"What have I done?" he cried to the kestra'chern. "What's happened to me? I've turned into... a... monster!" He sobbed, stricken with equal parts grief and guilt. "How could I have let myself get this way?"

Silverfox reached out a smooth, long-fingered hand, and swept the damp strands of hair from Firesong's face.

"That's what I hope to show you, my friend," Silverfox said quietly. "Your hands are burned by more than just fire. Now you are willing to see it all, and undo some of the harm you have done to yourself. Now you are ready. But it was a very near thing, and you must never forget it."

The kestra'chern stood up and offered his hand. Still burdened by the firebird and shaken by all that had just happened, Firesong took it. Darkwind and Elspeth stepped aside, their expressions sympathetic, and let them pass.

Silverfox led him into his own room, and sat him down on the bed. The kestra'chern sat beside him, though he made no move to touch him.

"Now rest a while, and listen to me carefully," Silverfox told him. "I will try to explain some of what has happened, but it may be complex. Be patient and open, and I will explain it all. Do you remember how the mage-storms affected you before they were stopped?"

He nodded, as Aya tucked his soft-feathered head beneath his chin.

"They affect every mage, but they do more to you than you were aware, you or anyone else. You are a Healing Adept; you are attuned to the way that magic affects the land around you, but not only are you sensitive to it, magic that affects the land will cause changes in you." He paused to see if Firesong understood, and continued at his nod of surprise. "That is why I am here; we found evidence in the records from the days of Skandranon that the same thing happened to one or two other mages of his era during the unsettled time after the Cataclysm, and it took them years to discover what had unbalanced previously rational people. The Vales have all been warned. I came here, in part to see if any of you had been affected, because the changes are subtle and not particularly obvious. That is only part of what happened to you; you are ill, Firesong, but it is an illness that few Healers would sense unless they knew what to look for. There are subtle changes physically in your brain rather than your mind. They have made you quick to anger, slow to reason They are things that make you see enemies and conspiracies where there are none."

Firesong croaked, "So," and then swallowed twice to steady his voice. "So... my own body and brain are no better off than the land."

Silverfox nodded and interlaced his fingers. "Thus and so. But there are other things; patterns of thought you have established that are your own doing, though these changes made them worse."

Firesong licked lips gone dry, and stroked Aya's back feathers "Looking to blame anyone but myself?" he said tentatively. "Searching for a scapegoat to be the author of all my problems?"

"Obsessing on finding a lifebond as if a lifebond meant the end to every problem in life?" Silverfox added dryly.

Firesong hung his head, thanking his Goddess silently for the fact that Silverfox had not ever learned of his plan to extend his life so that he could find a lifebond. I will tear the Sanctuary down and scatter the pieces tomorrow, he pledged Her. I will destroy it as I should have done in the first place.

Could it be that some of the taint of Falconsbane had lingered in that bloodstained place he had created? Could that also have been the origin of some of his madness?

If it was the origin, I still gave in to it, cultivated it, and cherished it. I, and no other. No one held me down and drove those thoughts into my head like so many spikes.

"I have been an idiot," he told the kestra'chern remorsefully. "Oh, Silverfox. No amount of ability or talent can make up for acting like a tyrannical madman."

Silverfox smiled warmly, reassuringly. With question and answer, riddle and verse, encouragement and reproach, the kestra'chern led him gently to bare his soul to the bones. And a few hours later, Firesong knew—just a little—how An'desha had felt, in his arms, not so very long ago.

Karal struggled with his demon, after finally asking Natoli to give him a little time to himself to think.

Tremane is the only optimal choice to approach. We can't let the people of and in Hardorn continue to suffer—and we need them. Tremane is an honorable man by his own standards.

But Tremane had also personally ordered the cold-blooded murder of not only Ulrich but several other important folk of Valdemar and the Alliance. The only reason those other attempts had not succeeded was purest good fortune. But he still had the blood of two perfectly innocent people on his hands, both of them servants of their respective deities, which could by some lights make it twice as heinous.

Karal was having a difficult time reconciling the Tremane who had ordered those deaths with the one who went out into dangerous conditions to rescue children.

On the one hand, I want to open negotiations with him. On the other, I want to make him suffer as much as I have. Then I want to kill him slowly and painfully, the way Ulrich died.

If the latter reaction was wrong, it was only human. Karal tried to think of the greater good, but he could not get his thoughts past that anger. Just as much to the point, he could not see how they could trust someone who would write someone else's life off as casually as erasing a name from a ledger.

If I just knew why—if I just knew that he hadn't done it in cold blood, in indifference, the way An'desha described—

If I just knew he had regretted it, even a little!

If I just knew why he did it—

He paced until he thought he was going to wear a hole in the carpet, and still got no further than that. it was already full dark, and the darkness outside was no less impenetrable than the darkness surrounding his heart.

I can't agree to open negotiations with someone I can't trust! That's pretty basic to the proposition of negotiations, isn't it?

Only one man knew why Tremane had issued his orders, done what he had done, and that was Tremane.

I have to know. I have to talk to him. Somehow.

"I have to talk to Tremane," he said aloud. Altra raised his head from his paws and stared at him as if he had sprouted fur and fangs.

:You must be joking,: the Firecat said flatly.

Karal shook his head. "I have to find a way to talk to him myself, Altra, before the others do. I have to know why. And I need to know if he'd do it again. What's the point in trying to deal with someone we can't trust?"

:I could give you a number of answers, but I don't think you're in the mood to hear them.:

"You've got to find a way to help me talk to him Altra, please!" Karal dropped down to his knees beside the Firecat, looking pleadingly into those blue eyes. "You're a mage."

:Not precisely in the way you mean.:

Karal ignored that. "Can't you do a scrying and make it work both ways?" he begged. "Can't you give me mind speech or find some other way that I can talk to Tremane?"

:I think this is a very, very bad idea, Karal.:

"I have to do this, Altra," he said warningly. "The other two won't follow through with the plan if I don't agree with it, that was the bargain. And I won't agree until I've had a chance to talk to Tremane myself, face-to-face if necessary!"

Altra looked at him measuringly. :I do believe that you would pack a bag and walk across two countries if you had to, in order to speak with this man.:

Karal nodded. "I won't have to, though. I'll bet Florian would help me rather than let me get into trouble. I'll bet Firesong would help me just to get rid of me!"

:Unfortunately, I'm sure you're correct.: The Firecat sighed heavily. :Very well. Since you're so insistent, I'll help you. But I can't create a scrying spell for you. What I can do is to take you there myself.:

Karal felt sick. "Jumping?" he faltered.

:It's the only way.: Altra cocked his head to one side and narrowed his eyes. :It's either that, or give up the idea. At least if I jump you into Tremane's study, I can jump you out again instantly if things go wrong. I can also hold him and keep him from doing anything for a limited period of time, which should make it possible for you to ask your questions of him without his raising an alarm. And don't forget that I also know the Tell-Me-true Spell, so the answers you get will be the ones you say you want to hear.:

"Jumping." His last experience with Jumping had been a dreadful one, and he had pledged that it would be the last time he let Altra jump him anywhere. For one moment, Karal contemplated giving up—

No. I have to know. I can't make a decision unless I know!

"All right," he said, and was rewarded by Altra's cars flattening in dismay. "Now. Tonight. Before I change my mind."

:I'd prefer that,: the Firecat said sourly.

"I know you would," he retorted. "That's why I want it to be now."

Tremane rubbed his aching eyes and glanced at what was left of his candle. It had been a long day, and a longer night, but he and the Mayor's Council were working on consolidating Imperial Law and Hardornen Law into a single codex that both Town and Barracks would be living by. He wanted to be sure they understood all the nuances of Imperial Law; the laws of Hardorn didn't seem to be as specific, which was no great surprise. Simpler society, simpler laws.

Nevertheless, the Imperial forces had brought a more complex society with them, and in some ways the people of Shonar were going to have to learn how to cope.

And in some ways, we are. A hundred compromises every fortnight.

He wondered what time it was; well past midnight, certainly. He'd dismissed all of his orderlies, aides, and clerks several hours ago. Just because their master chose to short himself on sleep to work like a maniac, that didn't mean they should. It was good to work like this, deep into the night, in the quiet of a building in which most people were asleep. Outside, the only men awake were the ones on the walls. The city of Shonar slept, too—there would be no more emergencies tonight, and he could work without interruption, secure in the knowledge that he was completely alone in his offices.

But suddenly, he was no longer alone.

His skin shivered; the hair on the back of his neck stood up in an atavistic reaction to the power flaring up in this room.

Power? But it isn't time for a mage-storm!

He looked up from his papers in startlement, just as a boy in an outlandish set of elaborate black robes appeared in front of his desk, his arms burdened with a huge orange-and-white cat that to his shocked eyes looked to be the size of a small calf.

He tried to reach for the dagger on the top of his desk; tried to shout to alert the guards patrolling outside his quarters. With a chill of panicked terror, he found he could do neither.

The cat glared at him with widened blue eyes, eyes whose pupils reflected greenly at him, as he struggled against the invisible bonds imprisoning him. Its eyes narrowed in satisfaction as he gave up the unequal contest, and it began to purr audibly.

It's the cat! That cat is doing this! He stared at it in astounded disbelief, and yet at the same time he was absolutely certain his conclusion was the right one. The cat held him pinned in his place! What was going on here?

The boy cleared his throat self-consciously. "I am here to be asking you some queries, sir," the boy said, clearly enough; although the words in the Imperial tongue were thick with the inflections of several accents warring with one another. Tremane switched his gaze from the cat to the boy—and saw that the "boy" was not as young as he'd thought. This was a young man about the same age as most of his aides, although his slight build and childlike face left the impression that he was much younger than his years. "You will not be permitted to speak above a whisper, and only in answer to the question I ask." He looked a bit green, and his eyes were not quite focusing, as if he was a bit ill.

Questions? He wants to ask me questions? He transports himself here by magic and holds me prisoner in my own office to ask me questions? Am I mad, or is he? Who is he? What is he?

"This, my first question is. When you loosed forth the man in the Valdemar Court whom you had sent to murder folk by stealth, the man who was the art-maker, did you send him forth with instructions exact? Had you made a choice of who he was to kill?" The young man stared at him as if he would, if he could, bore a hole in Tremane's head with his eyes and extract the answers directly.

The paralysis eased a little, and Tremane found that he could speak. "I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about," he tried to say, but his mouth would not speak what he intended to say! His lips moved, but he could not push himself to speak the untruth he thought. When his voice finally worked, the patterns it made were not the ones he had set it to! At first he stammered, and then he relaxed into speaking the truthful things he had tried to veil moments before.

"Not precisely," he heard himself whispering, to his own horror. "Not precisely, no. I ordered that people of a certain rank or station be eliminated. I really have no idea of the identities of people over there; my agents are simply not that good. Actually, at this point, they might as well not exist at all, since they can't get through to me with their information. I ordered that envoys and allies be removed; people vital to the continuance of the Alliance. I also ordered that the Queen be eliminated, but I frankly did not think that would succeed, as she is too well guarded."

He listened to himself, appalled. How was the young man doing this to him? His heart froze with fear—not because of the magic itself, but because of the implications. If this boy could do this, now, what would he be able to do later? Or was it the cat who was doing it?

The boy stared at him with eyes full of anguish. "Why?" he asked, his voice tight with emotion. "Why did you order such a thing?

I have to speak the truth. It might as well be truth of my phrasing and choice—the whole truth instead of parts. There is something more to this boy than—than an assassin, or an agent sent to capture me. Something personal; this boy would be a poor choice to send to interrogate an enemy commander, powers or not! His lack of composure betrays his extreme agitation and emotion. There is something larger here than one might first think. And with this compulsion to speak only what is true....

"I was certain at the time that the mage-storms that have been laying waste to the land originated in Valdemar," he told the boy. "They left me and my men cut off from the Empire, with weapons and protections we depend on for our lives utterly disrupted. Our supply lines were cut, our communications nonexistent, our organization fragmented. My men were in a panic, my mages helpless, and we were strung out along a line we could not possibly defend. If an opposing force had come against us, they could have slaughtered us. I was absolutely certain that these storms were a new weapon of the Alliance, made possible only because the mages of the Alliance were all working together. Disrupting the Alliance was the only way I could see to stop the storms."

The boy continued to stare at him in anguish, and although he no longer felt the compulsion to say anything more, that anguish urged him to continue.

"These are not men I had chosen, nor is this a command I would have picked if I myself had a choice," he said. "But the moment I accepted this command, these men became my personal responsibility. I must see to their safety, even before I see to my own. They must be fed before I eat, sheltered before I sleep, and although they are soldiers and expect to face battle and death, it is my job to see that their lives are not thrown away—if possible, to see that victories are with a minimum of bloodshed. At the time, I saw disaster overtaking us, and I had to do something before it caught us. If these storms had indeed come from Valdemar, they were a terror-weapon, and one tailored to strike particularly at us, because so much of what the Empire depends on in turn depends on magic. I thought, at the time, my action was justified if it saved my men. This was not something they could meet in combat or face over the edge of their shields."

Did this boy understand? At least he was listening, and Tremane was still able to speak.

"This is something I did not know when I first commanded men—when I was your age, in fact. Command is more than issuing orders, it is knowing what those orders might mean to the lives of your men and knowing that you and you alone are the one responsible for the outcome." These were the things he had never discussed with anyone else; in the spy-haunted milieu of the Empire, he would not have dared. "The men look to me to get them through each encounter; no man enters the army assuming he will die! They put their trust in me; I have to be worthy of that trust. To a good commander, no lives lost are 'acceptable.'"

The boy's gaze flickered, as if something he had said had touched a responsive nerve.

He gestured at the windows, as a cold blast shook them. "Look what these storms have wrought! Tell me I was wrong to fear for the lives of my men! I think that if it had not been for the walls we built here and the organization we gave them, the people of Shonar would be fighting monsters in the streets by night, and starving by day!"

The boy's eyes flickered toward the windows and back.

"As for what I ordered—my own mages have since told me that Valdemar did not send out the storms. I was wrong, I didn't wait for verification of my assumption, and as a result—I ordered something that was completely unjustified." He felt himself flushing hotly, and wondered at his own reaction. "If Valdemar had sent the storms, I am not certain now that what I did would have been justified either. Sending one weapon of terror in response to another is not a moral answer—but as a commander I don't often deal in moral answers, I deal in expediencies. I'm not used to moral answers, or moral questions. That is a failing of life in the Empire." He paused and added a final statement. "That is not meant to stand as an excuse, but as a reason. It is difficult to think in terms that one is not habituated to, and the center of life in the Empire is expediency."

True enough as far as it goes. There is no point in going into detail about Imperial life. Could anyone from Valdemar—I assume he must be from Valdemar—ever understand the Empire?

He had hardly admitted any of that even to himself, and he was surprised that he had poured it all out to a total stranger.

But this—young man—with the look of a priest has appeared in my office, with a cat in his arms that paralyzes me, with a look. A single thrown knife, and I would be dead, and with my life goes the organization of my troops. Perhaps that is why I am explaining all of this. Perhaps it needed to be said so that I could acknowledge it to myself, too.

The cat's eyes were on his, gazing at him with such intensity he almost expected the beast to speak. The young man's face bore a thoughtful expression; the pain was still there, but it was secondary to the sense of introspection.

Finally, the young man nodded and put the cat down for a moment. Once his hands were free, he drew something from his sleeve about the size of a dagger. He placed it on the desk.

It was a message-tube.

He picked up the cat again, and stepped back a pace as Tremane stared at the tube, perplexed. But the young man's next words solved his perplexity.

"If you wish to open a dialogue with Valdemar and the Alliance," he said quietly, "place your opening message in this. It will go where it needs to. I can assure you that the Queen and the Son of the Sun will see it, once it has been judged safe."

That peculiar shivering came over Tremane again; his eyes suddenly refused to focus. And when he could see again, the boy and the cat were gone.

He shook his head violently; he could move again perfectly well. Had it all been a hallucination brought on by too much work and too little rest? Had he fallen asleep over his papers and dreamed the whole incident?

But when he looked down at his desktop, the message-tube was still there.

It was real. It happened. Someone from Valdemar magicked himself into my office, without the use of a Portal, and interrogated me.

Not only that, but he must have "passed" his verbal examination, for here was the way to end at least one of the Conflicts facing him and his men.

Truce with the Alliance. Perhaps even membership in the Alliance?

Certainly the Allies were not suffering as Hardorn was. They had not originated the mage-storms, but they had a defense against them, a defense that the Imperial forces did not have.

Should I? It could be a trap. Dare I risk it?

A howling buffet of wind shook the stone walls of his office; snow actually drifted down to the floor from the triply shuttered and glazed windows. And midwinter was not even here yet—

—and the mage-storms were getting worse. It was only a matter of time before they changed something or someone inside the walls of Shonar. It could have already happened, perhaps they just hadn't discovered it yet. What would he do if that happened? He didn't know; he hadn't been able to plan for it, though his new agents in the ranks told him that the men themselves had come up with an answer. If it was an animal, it would die, no questions asked. If it was one of their comrades, and he retained his mind, they would find a way to make him useful. If it was one of their comrades and he attacked them, they would cut him down like any of the other boggles.

I must risk it. There is too much at stake.

He picked up the message-tube and placed it carefully in a desk drawer; then he stood up and blew out his candle. There was also too much at stake to risk writing a document that important when he was half drunk with fatigue.

Tomorrow he would close himself in his office and send word that he was not to be disturbed unless it was an emergency. This might be the most important letter he would ever write in his life.

:I didn't think you'd be so sick,: Altra said apologetically from the foot of Karal's bed, where he lay curled up around Karal's feet, keeping them warm. :I wouldn't have brought you home so fast if I'd thought you were going to react this badly.:

"It's all right," Karal replied faintly, as he lay back against his pillows. "Once there's nothing in my stomach things seem to settle down a bit more. The tea is helping. This is a nasty way to get a rest, though."

Altra had not even allowed him a single breath between Jumps, and his nausea had become a single overwhelming force that took over mind and body. The moment he reached his suite he had been forced to the bathroom, where he had clutched at the convenience and retched until he thought he was going to throw up his toenails. When he could stand without retching, he had dragged himself to the bell pull and summoned a "servant." As before, the "servants" who tended to his needs, especially at night, were actually Heraldic students. That was why he tried so seldom to bother them—but this time he had no other choice. He couldn't have gotten any farther than the chair he collapsed into if he'd been prodded with a hot poker.

The young man who had appeared had been seriously alarmed at his appearance, and had gotten Karal into bed before summoning a Healer.

"Stomach cold," the Healer had decreed—although Karal could tell she was profoundly puzzled by his lack of other symptoms. She had left him with several packets of herbal tea and instructions to drink as much of it as he could; the young man had made some up immediately and left it at Karal's bedside. He made up a snowpack to ease Karal's headache, and had also left a stern admonition to pull the bell to call him if he felt any worsening of his condition, or if he needed so much as a dry cracker.

"I'll be all right in a day or so, and meanwhile this gives me an excuse to be alone and think," he told the Firecat.

:If you were anyone else, I'd be surprised you want to do anything except lie there.: Altra curled up around his feet a little tighter, and his icy feet finally began to warm up. It felt very good, and the snowpack the young man had made for his head was finally doing something about the throbbing in his temples.

"Well, that's the curse of being what you and Ulrich made me. I can't stop thinking even when I'm miserable." In fact, he was torn in so many directions that it was going to take some time to sort them all out.

I want to hate Tremane. His need to hate the man warred with the reality of the man himself, making him want to scream in frustration. It would have been so simple if the Grand Duke had been a liar, a fraud, a man who did generous things because it would put people into his debt. Unfortunately for simple solutions, Tremane was none of those things. Altra knew the Karsite equivalent of the Valdemaran "Truth Spell," and he had held it on Tremane once his first spell successfully controlled the Grand Duke's body. Tremane could not have spoken anything other than the truth as long as Altra held that spell active.

Which made things that much more difficult for Karal.

The problem was, he understood Tremane and Tremane's motives. It was just as he had said to An'desha; he was cursed with being able to see all sides to an argument, and the validity of each and every side.

I would not have done what he did, but I have never been in the position he was. And I was not brought up to power, nor in the Empire. It is my reflex to take the moral path, and it is his to take the path of expediency.

The worst of it was that, given what Tremane had honestly thought was true and faced with Tremane's situation, he could not in all candor say that he would not have made the same choice—and issued the same orders. By Tremane's background, what he had done was probably incredibly moral, as well as expedient—eliminating a handful of people, to possibly prevent the deaths of many hundreds of his own men and of the citizens of Hardorn.

It is easy enough to justify yourself by saying that something is in self-defense, or is called for because someone else did something heinous. He could not say that he would not have given in to that temptation.

He might never lose his dislike of Tremane's attitudes, and he might never be able to forgive him, but he understood the man, and so he could not hate him for being what he was—which was the product of a world full of more duplicity and deceit than anything Karal had ever known. How could Tremane have expected anything else but an opponent who would cheerfully sacrifice innocents to take out an enemy? He probably met opponents like that every day in the Emperor's Court!

It was hardly fair.

I know. Life's not fair. He sighed. And I'm putting off stating a decision I've already made. "You took my message to An'desha?"

:As soon as you wrote it. He'll scry as often as he can, and check the tube for a message. Just as you asked. If there's anything there, he'll send for you and you can send me to fetch the tube,: Altra told him, blinking his eyes lazily. :Don't expect an immediate answer, though. It's probably going to take a few days before he makes up his mind, but we both know he's going to do it. He can't afford to pass up this chance.:

A few days. Altra was probably right, but these few days were going to seem like an awfully long time.

:Excuse me,: Altra said suddenly. :I should be going.:

The Firecat stood up, and vanished, the weight of his body lifting magically from Karal's feet and leaving behind only an impression in the blankets.

Now what on earth could have caused that?

"Altra? Altra?" Karal called in confusion. "What—"

Someone tapped on the outer door in the next room, and opened it. Light footsteps neared the door of his bedroom.

Natoli stood in the frame of the open door, one arm loaded with books, and the other holding the doorpost.

"Hello," she said. "I thought you might be lonely. I figured I could keep you company as long as you're sick. Just don't pass it on to me, all right?"

He smiled. "I promise I won't," he said, knowing that was a promise he could keep. "I couldn't tell the Healer, but it's only jumping sickness. Nothing you can catch."

"Oh, good," she said, smiling, and sat down beside him. "That's just what I wanted to hear."

Those few days are going to pass awfully quickly.

* * *

Karal and An'desha were pretending to look over some papers before the Grand Council meeting, but that was only the excuse so that the two of them could have a word before they upset everything with the little burden Altra was going to deliver.

"You're sure it's all right, the message is safe?" Karal asked An'desha in an urgent whisper. "I mean—look, there's Selenay and Solaris sitting together. One trap could eliminate them both!"

"I checked it, Altra checked it, and you checked it," An'desha replied. "Really, Karal, given the propensity for nasty surprises that Ma'ar and his successive incarnations had, and all the information on them they left in my memory, you can trust me to find a mage-trap in a piece of paper! And anyway, Altra says that a mage-storm hit the Imperials again just before he went to get the tube. He doubts anything as delicate as a complicated trap would have survived."

"All right," Karal sighed, fiddling with his pens. "I'm just nervous."

An'desha gave him an oblique look. "You should be. I have to go sit down or it's going to look odd—we all agreed that it shouldn't look as if we had anything to do with this when it happens. I'll see you later."

An'desha hurried to his own seat as the latecomers for the Grand Council meeting arrived. When Tremane had finally put something in the message-tube, Altra had gone to get it, but he had not given it to them immediately. He asked them to think first about how it was to be presented.

Karal had wondered about that phrasing, until it dawned on him that if Solaris had any idea that he had gone behind her back to open negotiations with Tremane, she would probably see to it that the overture never got any further than that first message. She would also flay him alive, but that was incidental to the bigger scheme of things.

For that matter, Selenay might feel the same as Solaris about being circumvented.

The only person who knew they were going to be investigating the Imperials was Talia, and she had no notion that they intended to make contact. For all that the three of them were trusted, it was only to a point, and that point did not include haring off and sending messages to the enemy inviting him to come and play nicely.

That was when they all agreed that it would look as if Altra was the instigator. After they checked the message for any kind of trap, Altra would take it and present it himself to the Queen and the Son of the Sun at a Grand Council meeting, as if it had been his idea to contact Tremane. Solaris would no more question the reasoning and motives of a Firecat than Selenay would question a Companion. And she could hardly take a messenger of Vkandis to task for stepping outside his limits!

This was to be Solaris' last meeting for some time. She had at least managed to establish to the other members of the Council that she trusted Karal, and that Karal would never act or speak contrary to her will—and if other people on the Council had a problem with her will, that was another story altogether, and would be dealt with by negotiation. Although many of them obviously still felt that he was too young for his job, the same people felt confident that since he was so young, he would hardly dare to say or do anything contrary to orders.

So in theory, this would be the last time for several weeks or even months that Solaris sat in the seat beside Selenay. In theory. He had the feeling that once Altra showed up, the plans would change abruptly.

The members of the Grand Council took their seats, the Council session opened, and everything seemed routine, right down to the fact that his hands and feet were numb with cold. Things proceeded at the usual orderly pace, up until the moment that Selenay asked if there was any new business.

Which was, of course, the very moment that Altra showed up.

He simply appeared, dropped the message-tube between Solaris and Selenay, and vanished again.

Selenay was the one who picked it up and opened it, but both of them leaned over the paper rolled up inside. Karal knew what it said by heart.

To Queen Selenay, High Priest Solaris, and the members of the Alliance. Grand Duke Tremane, leader of the former Imperial Divisions of the Hardorn Pacification Force, acting Lord of Shonar, and Commander of the combined Hardorn and Imperial Armies, greets you. Tremane wishes to inform you that his relation with the Emperor and the Empire has been irrevocably severed. It is in the interest of both of our parties to negotiate a truce, preparatory to further negotiations, extending to, but not limited to, solidifying an alliance among all our peoples. To this end, he solicits an answer from you regarding such a truce, and such negotiations.

It was signed and sealed with the Grand Duke's personal seal, not the Imperial Seal, a nicety that Altra seemed to find amusing.

It was written in Hardornen and it didn't take long to read, although it was repeated in Karsite, the Imperial tongue, and Valdemaran. Tremane must have scoured the town to find someone who knew Karsite—perhaps a trader, or a priest. That was another nice touch, even if the grammar was atrocious.

Solaris and Selenay read it with their mouths clamped into tight, thin lines. Selenay passed it to Daren without a word; the Prince-Consort read it aloud.

And just as Karal had figured, all of hell itself broke loose when he finished.

Men and women leaped to their feet, each of them demanding the right to be heard immediately. Initially, as with this Grand Council, there was a great deal of shouting and carrying on, mostly on the part of people who had very little to say. Solaris was ominously quiet, which made Karal very nervous. She sat beside Selenay in a pose so motionless she could have been a statue. He knew that pose; she only took it when she was being her most formal, taking on the full persona of the Son of the Sun, the Falcon of Light, Defender of the Faithful.

He kept quite silent, although Jarim more than made up for his silence until the moment when Lo'isha, the Sworn-Shaman, simply put one hand quietly on his sleeve and stared at him. Then he sat down abruptly and didn't speak for the rest of the meeting.

Solaris finally softened a little, but she kept casting suspicious glances at him all during the rest of the meeting, which made Karal even more nervous than before. He could deal with the Son of the Sun; he wasn't certain he could handle an angry Solaris who was concentrating on personal outrage.

Karal took notes diligently, avoiding Solaris' gaze whenever possible. The meeting finally ended when Selenay stood up and announced, "This is too important to decide on the spur of the moment. I'd like to dismiss this meeting so that we all have the opportunity to think over the positive and negative aspects of this proposal. We'll reconvene tomorrow; be prepared to present your analysis in an orderly fashion." With that, she gestured to Daren, and the two of them left the meeting, which meant that whatever else happened, it was no longer official.

That certainly put an abrupt end to the confusion. Karal gathered up his things quickly and made his escape while most of the other Council members were still arguing among themselves. But he noted that Solaris was also leaving by the same door as Selenay, and he only hoped that she was going to spend a great deal of time talking with her Valdemaran counterpart. With luck, he could be out of the Palace and down at the Compass Rose before she remembered her suspicions and sent someone to look for him.

But today his luck was out. Solaris was waiting for him in his suite, sitting on his couch as formally as if it was her throne.

"Shut the door, Karal," she ordered as he stood in the doorframe in shock. Numbly, he did as she ordered, and turned to face her. His joints felt like carved granite, as he stood, unable to relax under her gaze.

"You were behind this, or at least you were aware of what Altra was doing, and don't bother to deny it," she said stiffly, as he stood with his back to the door and his knees shaking. His stomach quaked. "Altra is your Firecat, and he would not have attempted anything so audacious if you were not aware of it. Somehow you persuaded him this was a good idea. You and two of these foreigners have been closeted doing some form of unspecified scrying, according to Selenay. I do not require a spell to show me the truth or to put obvious facts together into a whole."

He swallowed, and nodded, admitting everything with that single gesture. His throat was too tight to get any words out, anyway.

She stood up, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes as she strode toward him, anger in her every step. This was what he had feared most—Solaris, angry in herself. "This man ordered the murder of Priest Ulrich—your mentor, my friend, and a Black-robe of Vkandis! How could you even contemplate consorting with him? What possible reasons could you have for approaching him?"

After two tries, he at least got out an answer. "Because—we had to, Radiance," he said weakly. "Because there was no choice."

With that, she unleashed all of her formidable intellect and equally formidable anger on him in an interrogation that was as thorough as it was merciless. Karal answered her as best he could, but the next two marks left him weak, sweating, and shaking before it was all over. Solaris could be absolutely brutal when she wanted to be, and all without ever raising a hand or her voice. Her cross-examination was relentless and thorough, and during it she dissected his personality and left every personal weakness he knew of and some he had never suspected lying exposed. She prowled around him like a hunting cat, she moved to within a hair of his face to hiss directly into his eyes, and stood off at a distance as if she didn't want to get near him. She left his spirit flayed, and convinced him a dozen times over that she was about to demote him to least-senior cleaner of the Temple latrines—if he was lucky and she was feeling generous.

Nevertheless he managed to remain adamant and unshakable in his conviction that, repugnant as it was, they could not afford to allow Tremane to remain an enemy.

Finally, she sat down again, although she did not permit him to do so. Ten heartbeats later, she spoke.

"Let me see if I understand all your reasoning, such as it is," she said coldly. "First, you believe that the folk of Hardorn and even the men under this Tremane's command have been suffering for far too long. Second, the best indications are that the new boundaries of whatever solution we come up with when the breakwater fails must include the eastern border of Hardorn. Third, there is some thought that if we had access to the mages trained in the Empire we might be able to find that solution sooner. And fourth—" she leveled a stare at him that was as opaque as steel. "Fourth. You have come to the conclusion that Tremane can be trusted."

"He was under Altra's Tell-Me-True all the while he answered my questions. He has protected the people of Shonar, even though he didn't have to," Karal reminded her as he shivered and did not bother to try to hide the fact. "More than that, he has done things for their benefit personally, things that could not possibly be of profit to him. He has kept every pledge he made them, and every pledge he made his own men."

"Hmm." Her expression did not change.

"I would add a fifth, but it is quite subjective," he said, feeling sweat run down the back of his neck. "I believe he—regrets his actions."

"Regrets." Her mouth tightened, and she stood up again. "There are some things I must do, but as of this moment, your authority is in abeyance. You will remain here in these rooms until I give you leave to go elsewhere, and where that will be is going to depend on what I learn in the next few marks."

She swept past him; he held open the door for her, and she swept out, leaving him shaking with anxiety and reaction in her wake.

After he closed the door behind her, he went straight to his bed and lay down on it, his body as exhausted as if he had just run around the city walls, and his bones gone all to water. No need to tell him to stay here, for he couldn't have left his room if it had been on fire.

He didn't know what she was going to do next, but every possibility left him shaking with fear. Not for himself, but for her, and for everything the Alliance had done here.

Tremane watched his windows shake as another blast of icy wind hit them a wind laden with so much blowing snow that there was no view outside. The cat had appeared as soon as he put down the message-tube; it had materialized on his desk, placed a paw on the tube, and vanished again, taking the tube with it.

They were in the middle of another blizzard. He had waited until another blizzard struck and had been active for some time before actually putting his carefully-worded overture into the tube; he wanted to be sure that he would have a time when he would be able to stay in his office for several hours, waiting for a reply. There had been no emergencies, and now the folk of the Town and Barracks were safely buttoned up in their lodgings, passing the time until the storm blew itself out. No one would need him until that happened. He could wait for as much as two days for an answer to his overture, if nothing went wrong.

Which was precisely what he was doing now; waiting. He fully expected the cat to show up alone, but with a written reply, a tentative suggestion that his overture was being considered. It was also possible that the cat would show up with the boy, though that was less likely. Negotiations took time, and many exchanges of paper, before anything concrete came of them.

He did not expect the answer he got—a cat all right, but with the cat was a woman, garbed in elaborate robes of gold and white, robes that he recognized from the descriptions passed to him by his spies. And now he cursed his stupidity for not recognizing a less-elaborate, masculine version of the same robes on the boy.

This was High Priest (not Priestess) Solaris, the Son of the Sun, the secular and sacred leader of all the people of Karse. And from her expression, she was perfectly prepared to whip that ritual dagger she was carrying out of her belt and slit his throat on the spot.

He, of course, could not move. Once again, the cat held him paralyzed.

Her eyes glared at him with a fire of rage that gave even him, a battle-hardened veteran, pause. Her face was as white as the snow outside, but her hands were steady. "You give me one good reason may, why killing you I should not be, as murdering my friend you did," she snarled, in heavily-accented Hardornen.

Not bad, considering that she probably hasn't studied it much.

His mind raced. What should he tell her? What could he tell her? What would she believe?

Nothing, probably.

No, there was no reason to defend himself or his actions. Coming up with excuses would not save him.

He would have drawn himself up in his chair if he had been free to. Instead, he gazed directly into her eyes. Once again, he would probably be forced to speak the truth, so why not simply do so to begin with?

"I cannot," he told her with bald honesty. "By the laws of your land and of my own, my life is certainly forfeit to you. I committed murder, if only by secondhand. I cannot justify a decision that has proved to be so very wrong, and so ill-conceived."

Her eyes narrowed a trifle, as if she had expected duplicity, or at least an attempt at it. Had she not put that magic on his lips that forced him to speak truthfully?

"By the same token, my best information at the time was that the mage-storms were a weapon of terror sent by your Alliance," he continued. "I sent my own weapon of terror to disrupt your Alliance. I proved by that assumption, I suppose, that my moral standards are lower than yours, since I could even think that you might send terror-weapons that strike at armies and civilians alike. I further proved the same thing since I retaliated with a weapon of terror. The Empire is a bad enemy to have, lady, and we have made worse enemies over the centuries. We are prepared to see just about any atrocity, and to meet it with the same."

Her frown deepened, but her eyes widened a little.

"But I put this to you, Son of the Sun—as a leader, I would venture to say that you have been in similar situations. Whether you would have responded in the same way, only you can say."

That hit home; he saw it in her eyes, in the way she winced slightly. But her anger had not lessened.

"For the first time in this, my life," she said through clenched teeth, "I considering am my ban upon the demons revoking, and up the demon-mages bringing to those terrible spirits turning loose upon your troops. That is what you have me brought to!"

He thought very carefully before speaking. "By all repute, Solaris, you are too just to levy upon the innocent a retribution due only to their leader."

Her chin rose. "So. You offer to me your life?"

He only raised one eyebrow—that much movement, at least, was permitted him. "The people of this place depend on my leadership, as do my men. Without me, Shonar and the barracks will be in chaos, for there is no single man that they will all agree on as leader. Likeliest, it would be one of my generals who triumphed; a general who would not know as much about you, and who would still consider your Alliance to be his mortal enemy. You are too good a leader to slay a former enemy who might be replaced with someone who will still be your enemy." He tried a touch of boldness. "I am not your enemy. Solaris. I told the truth in my missive. We have lost touch with the Empire, and the Empire has abandoned us. My duty to my men dictates that I see to their safety and there is no safety in continuing an aggression on behalf of someone who has left us here to rot." He managed a slight shrug. "The real enemy we both face is the force that sends these mage-storms. Isn't it better to face that enemy together?"

Her eyes narrowed to slits in speculation, although her jaw was still clenched tightly in anger.

"You have not attained and held the rank of Son of the Sun without learning the lesson of expediency, Radiance," he finished. I believe this is the place to stop—while my luck is still holding. One more word might turn her the other way.

"No," she hissed. "I have not."

She stepped back, and he felt relief sweep over him. She was not going to kill him—which meant that she was possibly going to support his bid for a truce and an alliance of his own.

Much as she might hate it, she knew that it would bring the greater good.

She suddenly waved her hand, then gestured with a clenched fist, and he felt the poor, sad remains of his shielding against magics collapse and disintegrate. What the storms had battered, her magic finished—and he felt dread clench at his guts.

"But I do curse you," she said, with a grim smile. "I curse you, with something the touch of which you have already felt. Your help we need, but know you I do not, and trust you I do not. In the Name of Vkandis Sunlord, and with the power He has granted me as His Son, upon you I lay that you will never to me lie, nor to anyone else tell an untruth, whoever questions you. Never."

Chill spread through his body. She could not have imagined a more terrible curse for a son of the Empire, he thought numbly. I can never, ever go home again.... Not that he could have anyway, given what he had already done.

"Feel the curse—or the freedom—of truth," she finished, her smile widening, her eyes glowing fiercely, "And then will we see what measure of man you are truly."

She swept up the cat in her arms, and vanished.

With her disappearance, the paralysis vanished also, and he sagged in his chair, gone boneless with relief and reaction.

He let out his breath, and laid his head down on his arms on the top of his desk, nearer to tears than he had been in all of his adult life. In all of his checkered career, he had never had quite so close an escape, not even on the battlefield—and in all of his life, he had never gotten out of such a situation by doing as he had, telling the truth.

Now I will have no choice, he thought, that chill passing over him again. But—perhaps she overestimated her power. I should test this.

"I am Grand Duke Tremane," he said aloud raising his head from his arms, "And I am a mage of average powers, forty-five years of age."

He cursed, silently. He had meant to say, "A mage of astounding powers, and sixteen years of age." He had thought right up until the words emerged from his mouth, that this was what he was going to say.

The curse was working, and it worked even without having anyone to hear him but himself.

The curse of truth, he thought, propping his head up on one hand as a headache started. How my enemies would laugh!

But she was right. Now even he would find out just what a measure of a man he was. He only hoped he would be able to live with what he learned.

Ten

I am still envoy, I still have all my limbs, my skin has not been flayed from me, and Vkandis help me, but I am actually holding up under this pressure.

Solaris had finally gone, and the wonder of it was that no one but Karal had ever learned about that torturous interview in his suite. She left him and his authority intact and never mentioned to anyone else that the opening of negotiations with Tremane had been anyone's idea but the Firecat's. There was even a peculiar sort of respect in the way she looked at him now. Respect for standing up to her? Perhaps that was it. Perhaps it was respect for the fact that he stood behind his convictions, that he had not let personal feelings interfere with what was important for the greater good.

He did not know for certain just what it was she had done after she left him. He didn't really want to ask. Whatever it was, she had gone on to Selenay and convened a small meeting of the envoys and heads of state—that is, a meeting of herself, Selenay, Prince Daren for Rethwellan, Jarim and the Sworn-Shaman for the Shin'a'in, Treyvan for the k'Leshya and Darkwind for the Tayledras. With that smaller, much more manageable group, a basic reply to Tremane was worked out and sent, not via Altra, but via Hansa.

I don't think she's ever going to forgive Altra.

Karal had no idea what had made Solaris change her mind, but whatever it was, it pleased her enough that she tacitly forgave him for what he had done.

And, eventually, it was Hansa who Jumped back to Haven with Tremane's chosen representative—Karal was just as glad that they would no longer be treating with Tremane personally. He did not think that he would ever be able to face the man without wanting to perform some very painful and undiplomatic experiment upon his body involving knives and large stones.

Karal had given up expecting anything, after learning that the leader of the Imperial Army looked like a clerk, so he wasn't particularly surprised when the man Tremane chose to represent him was a mage so old and decrepit it looked as if he might break up and blow apart in a high wind. But although the mage Sejanes was old, there was nothing whatsoever the matter with his mind. He was as sharp as anyone Karal had ever met. He already spoke Hardornen well enough to please some of the Hardornen exiles living at the Valdemaran Court, and he began picking up Valdemaran and Tayledras with a speed that left Karal gasping.

Finally, though, the old boy confessed that it was the result of a spell, one used successfully in the Empire for centuries. "If we hadn't had it already, we would have been forced to concoct it," he said, eyes twinkling. "Or our clerks' time would be taken up with learning languages and not with their real duties."

"And what duties are those, sir?" Darkwind had asked.

"Why, running the Empire, of course," the old fellow countered. "Everyone knows it's the clerks that run the government and the rest of it is all just for show. At any rate, I'm glad I'm in a place where I can cast it again, without having to recast it every few days."

Surprisingly, the old man had completely won over Solaris, perhaps because he reminded her of Ulrich. He had spent several marks closeted alone with her when he first arrived, and when they emerged again, Solaris demonstrated a considerably softened attitude toward the Imperials—and a positively friendly one toward Sejanes himself.

Well, what they had said or done was also none of Karal's business, much as it might eat at his curiosity. If she or Sejanes ever thought he needed to know, they would tell him. Otherwise, there were many things in the world he would never know the answer to, and this was just one more.

Much to Firesong's chagrin, the Imperial mages were all taught an analytical, logical approach to magic. Faced with overwhelming odds against the superiority of "instinct," the Tayledras Adept gave in, and subjected himself and his techniques to a similar analysis. It was just as well, considering that the information Sejanes brought with him indicated a failure of the breakwater just past Midwinter. Firesong volunteered to calculate the exact time, by intuition only, as a last effort to prove the validity of art over mathematics, but he finally acquiesced and helped with the more scientific method. Work on a solution proceeded at a feverish pace. All around them, the capital was preparing for Midwinter Festival with dogged determination, but there would be no time for festivals for the mages and artificers hunting for that elusive solution.

In the anxious concentration on what magic might do to save Valdemar and her allies from the same fate known of in Hardorn, the other projects the artificers and their students had been working on suffered the neglect of the masters.

There were some projects that should never have gone without supervision. It was a week before Midwinter that the artificer's experimental boiler on the Palace grounds exploded.

The Palace rocked to its foundations, and everyone in the Grand Council Chamber looked up in startlement. Like the worst clap of thunder anyone had ever heard increased a thousand fold it vibrated the Palace and everything in it. As it shook the building, it shook everyone who heard it with sudden, atavistic fear. Of everyone in the chamber, only Karal had an inkling of what the cause was.

"The boiler!" he cried, and sprang from his chair in a scattering of pens and. papers, heading for the door. He tripped over the legs of his fallen chair, caught himself by flailing his arms wildly as he staggered across the floor, and continued his run. He burst out of the door to the chamber, startling the guards no end, and tore down the hall in the direction of the Collegia.

One of the student artificers had been working on the boiler-engine project before all the turmoil about the breakwater failure began. Natoli and Master Isak had been helping him with it until the breakwater project occupied their attention; and ever since she stopped helping him, Natoli had been feeling guilty about neglecting him. He had no aptitude for the breakwater project and had been working on the boiler alone and unaided for some time. His idea was to heat the Collegia with the waste hot water from his boiler, while using the steam-piston contrivances attached to it to drive a water pump bringing water up from wells, and to do other mechanical work needed at the complex. Chopping wood, for instance; he had a design for a steam-drive wood splitter that would save servants endless time. His innovations included plans for an ingenious mechanism to supply wood and water to the boiler itself on a constant basis. That was the tricky part, and the one Natoli had agreed to help him with.

This was one of the largest steam-boilers anyone had ever built, almost the size of a man, and it was inherently dangerous. Boilers had exploded before this. He remembered the talk from the Compass Rose. If the boiler overheated, or boiled dry—if it had boiled dry and they weren't aware of the fact, and they'd then added water to it—

He burst out of the Palace doors into the day lit gardens, and floundered across the snow-covered grounds, oblivious to the cold. Other people ahead of him surged out of the Collegia buildings, heading in the same direction.

The boiler was at some distance from the Collegia, and had been set up inside its own little brick "false-tower" so as not to be a blight on the landscape. Those brick walls would have contained the explosion—

And if anyone was still inside the building, they'd have been caught between the explosion and the brick walls!

This was like a nightmare, where he ran as hard as he could, until his side and lungs burned and he couldn't even catch his breath, and he still made no progress in the knee deep snow. By the time he reached the scene, plenty of other people had already arrived, and the injured had been taken away. All that was left to see were the remains of the boiler and the tower. The wooden door- and window-frames had been blown out of the walls in a shower of glass and splinters, and the brick walls themselves were cracked and bowed ominously outward. Some folk were throwing buckets of snow into the interior of the tower, presumably to put out a fire and cool the remains of the boiler, and every bucketful that went in produced a billow of steam and an ominous hissing.

Karal spotted one of the Masters; the one concerned with mechanics and clockwork, Master Isak. The old man was just standing in the snow, his square, lined face blank, his coat on inside-out. "What happened?" he cried, grabbing Master Isak's sleeve. "Was anyone hurt? Who was here?"

Isak wiped his forehead, his shock of white hair and side-whiskers standing out like an angry cat's fur. "The boiler itself didn't rupture," he said vaguely. "It was the offset pipe—just blew, tore the boiler out of its footing and drove it into the far wall in an instant. There were four students here, and they were all hurt, but only Justen was hurt badly. Poor boy! Poor boy! He tried to get the safety valve opened wide to let the pressure off, but it wasn't enough—he ran for the door, but—he was still inside the building when it went, the rest were already at the door and the explosion blew them into the snow. Horrible... just horrible."

"Was Natoli here?" Karal demanded, shouting and shaking the poor man's arm. "Was she?"

"They took her with the rest to Healer's," Isak mumbled, staring blankly at the blood-spattered remains of the door and wringing his hands with anxiety. "The Healers have them all. I don't know anything else. They just left—"

Karal dropped Isak's arm and sprinted—or tried to—in the direction of the Healer's Collegium. Running through the heavy snow was like trying to run in loose hay; it was impossible to make any progress. And by the time he got there, they had taken Natoli off to a little room by herself and wouldn't let him or anyone else near her.

"She just has a concussion, some bruises, and a broken wrist and ankle" they told him. "But we don't know for certain, and we can't let anyone in to upset her right now. She's upset enough as it is."

Why, he soon found out—Justen the boy she'd been helping, had lost both legs to the knee, and was badly scalded elsewhere. Only the fact that he had been blown out into the snow through the door saved him from worse burns. His clothing had been saturated with boiling water, but the snow had cooled it quickly enough that the burns where his clothing had nominally protected him were superficial, though painful.

"At least it wasn't his hands or his eyes," one of the Healers said grimly, wiping his bloodstained sleeve against his sweating brow. "As an artificer, he can get along without legs, but not without hands or sight. And considering that he was in the same room as the boiler, he could have been killed."

That was the general consensus; it could have been a lot worse. That was no comfort to Karal. It is bad enough! He loitered about the quiet halls, trying desperately to find someone to question, but everyone in the Collegium who was concerned with the four injured students was busy, and none of them had any time to talk to him. Anyone else he asked would only say apologetically that he knew as much as they did.

Finally, he gave up and headed for the chambers set up in the Palace where the artificers were working with the mages. Maybe someone there would know something.

No one did; there was a general air of gloom pervading the place. Some, like Master Levy and An'desha, were working grimly at the water-table or at other tasks; their set expressions and the tight lines of their mouths told him that they were trying to distract themselves with work. Others were making no pretense at work; they simply sat with hanging heads and nakedly anxious expressions, looking up with wide and hopeful or fearful eyes whenever someone came to the door.

He joined the pair at the water-table; they were trying some new trick of An'desha's that involved dropping a ring into the table rather than a single stone, and seeing how the waves reflected inward toward the center of the ring. Since the waves of the mage-storms were "echoing back" to their original center, this seemed to be the best way to simulate the effect.

They did this, over and over again, making minute changes and repeating the experiment mindlessly, then making notes in ledger after ledger. More and more people came to the room, as if aware that any news from the Healers would come here first.

Karal sat on a bench and watched the ring drop, over and over. Elspeth and Darkwind sat next to him and Elspeth put one hand gently on his shoulder; he hadn't seen them come in, but he wasn't surprised that they were here.

The walls of that tower were bowed outward, and the boiler was nothing more than metal scraps, he thought, feeling an invisible hand squeezing his heart. How could she be all right? Pieces of metal must have been shot through the air like lances! Were they just telling me that to make me feel better?

If only he knew! If only someone would come with word!

A box full of the round pebbles they used in the water-table lay on the bench beside him, and he began picking up handfuls and dropping them back into the box, one at a time. Darkwind began wrapping the shaft of a feather with fine silver wire, and Elspeth began methodically sharpening one of her knives. The stropping sound blended with the tick tick of pebbles dropping into the box, forming a peculiar and hypnotic pattern.

:Karal!:

Karal's hand closed hard on the pebbles; Altra materialized with lightning suddenness right in front of them.

Elspeth dropped her dagger.

:Karal, I've just been to Natoli—she's fine. Or rather, she's no worse than the Healers told you. Concussion, cracked collarbone, bruises, broken wrist, but only a badly sprained ankle.:

Karal babbled all this to the rest of the room, as quickly as Altra relayed it to him mentally. As he spoke, the atmosphere in the room changed dramatically.

:Justen will live, and in fact he's already making rather narcotic-induced plans for artificial legs or a wheeled chair. His burns are painful, but they have new dressings and new narcotics from the k'Leshya that will make a big difference. Ferd's concussed and his wrists are both broken, but they'll heal fine, David broke three ribs and his arm. That's it. That's all. They're going to be all right!:

Cheers rang out across the room, although Karal's mind was only on Natoli. He let out a whoop, and threw his handful of pebbles into the air. An'desha yelped and dropped the hoop he was holding onto to cover his head with his hands as pebbles showered down around him.

The hoop and one of the stones hit the water simultaneously, the stone falling in the middle of the area enclosed by the hoop. An'desha ignored it, vaulting across benches to join Karal in a back-slapping indulgence of relief.

But Master Levy ignored them, leaning over to peer intently at the water-table.

When they finally stopped acting like a pair of demented idiots, he beckoned imperiously to An'desha. "Get over here, would you? Something interesting happened this time."

Heads turned all over the room at that, and a sudden silence fell, for Master Levy never used the term "interesting" unless something of cosmic portent had occurred or been calculated. An'desha trotted back to his place beside Master Levy and picked the hoop up out of the water.

Master Levy picked up a stone.

He gave the signal to An'desha to drop the hoop, and at the same time dropped the stone into the exact center of the area defined by the hoop.

"There," he said, as An'desha leaned over the table. "Where the two sets of waves meet—you see?"

"They're canceling each other," An'desha breathed. "The water isn't exactly smooth, but it's just a minor disturbance. It jitters... it breaks up."

Darkwind rose to his feet with alacrity, Elspeth following. "Do that again!" he ordered. "I want to see this."

Others quickly gathered around the table, including those who had only come here on the chance that there was word about the injured students. The experiment was repeated over and over again, with the stone being dropped simultaneously with the hoop, a heartbeat after the hoop was dropped, and a heartbeat before. In all cases, the waves in the water caused by the hoop were at least partially canceled by the waves from the dropped stone.

And the trick worked best when the stone was dropped in the exact center of the area defined by the hoop.

"This is it," Master Levy breathed, his eyes lighting.

"But how are we going to set up an opposing force, in the proper modulation, that will cancel the mage-storm waves?"

Karal came back to hear Master Levy ask one of his typically brutally precise questions. He would rather have been at Natoli's side, but the Healers still weren't letting anyone in with the students. Now he was back, half a candle mark later, and the discussions were still going strong.

"More magic, like a Final Strike," Darkwind replied promptly. "The storms were caused by magic. We can set up a canceling force by magic, something that releases an immense amount of energy all at once. We've canceled magic before—we do that all the time to blunt effects, in containment spells—those are just spells that exactly counter the force coming out of someone or something." Now his face lit up as well. "That's our answer, for now at least! We can't replicate something that will exactly duplicate the force of the original Cataclysm, but I bet we can come close enough to buy us some more time! Or at least—"

"But—" Master Levy began.

Darkwind waved at him, and he closed his mouth on whatever he was going to say. "Or at least clip the top off those waves. I don't know how, but I know that there has to be a way. We've got mages from four different disciplines here, and if among all of us we can't find an answer, I'll eat my boots without sauce!"

"I hope you have a taste for leather," Master Levy muttered, but only Karal heard him.

"I'll reconvene the mages in the Grand Council chamber," Elspeth said, and ran off before anyone could stop her—not that they wanted to. Darkwind looked at An'desha, who shrugged.

"We might as well," he opined. "It isn't even dark yet. We have the whole night to argue."

The group, when it finally assembled, included not only the mages of the Tayledras, Sejanes, the k'Leshya mages, and the White Winds mages who were still teaching at the Collegium, it also included Karal, Altra, Lo'isha the Sworn-Shaman of the Shin'a'in, and one of the Karsite Mage-Priests who had fought Ancar, the same one who had saved Natoli's father's life. They had to use the Grand Council chamber as there was no other room large enough to hold not one, but four gryphons. Master Levy had the water-table emptied, brought to the chamber, and refilled so that he could demonstrate their discovery.

All of those present leaned over the table with extreme interest; Master Levy and An'desha demonstrated their experiment many times over so that everyone got a chance to see what was going on in detail.

"Now," the Master Artificer said, when everyone had looked his fill, "I am out of my depth. I leave it to you to determine if this model is accurate to the situation, and if so, what can be done about it."

"For a beginning, my people back in Shonar have been measuring the strength, duration, and timing of the storm-waves," Sejanes said briskly. "We have all of those that occurred right up until the moment I departed, but in the interests of complete accuracy, we should get the most recent. If my lord cat over there will take a message—"

Altra bowed his head gracefully.

"—I can get them to send the most recent of their records, and we can work out just how large an event we'll have to create for the canceling effect." Sejanes scribbled a brief message, and Altra paced across the table to take it from him. The Firecat vanished; by now the mages were so used to the way he came and went that they paid no attention.

"We do have a major problem," Master Levy pointed out. "We have, not one, but two event-centers, and one is absolutely inaccessible unless you happen to be a fish."

"That's true," said one of the human k'Leshya mages, "but the real problems are occurring where the waves intersect. Those are the places where weather disruptions are forming, where monsters are created, and where there is transportation of land. We might find that if we only have to deal with one set of waves, the effect on magic would be temporary and can be shielded against for a time if we can just cancel out the Dhorisha waves."

Master Levy shrugged and spread his hands. "I make no pretense that I understand magic; I only observe and deduce what I can."

Sejanes cackled and slapped him on the back. The old man was stronger than he looked; Master Levy actually staggered for a moment. "Hiding arrogance behind false modesty, boy? Don't bother; we all know we're in elite company, and you're included in that. Now, the question is, just what is our pebble going to be?"

"The generating force is going to have to be powerful," Darkwind said soberly. "Very powerful. I need to point out, friends, that I do not think it is going to be possible to generate anything powerful enough to counter that final wave—the echo of the Cataclysm itself. Not without creating another Dhorisha, another Evendim. And I don't think any of us want to do that."

"So far as that goes, I don't particularly want a massive explosion in the heart of my homeland," Lo'isha put in. "We rather like the Plains the way they are, and I'm not certain we can persuade the Star-Eyed to put it back if we ruin it a second time, however lofty our motives."

"No—now wait a moment," Sejanes interrupted. "The problem is that the original Cataclysm was the result of two events, both intended to do the maximum in physical damage. Remember? Physical damage. Your Mage of Silence wanted to destroy his enemy's entire force, and destroy his own Tower so that if the enemy somehow survived, he wouldn't be able to find anything to use. But if all we want to do is to send out a counter in the energy-plane of magic, is there any reason why we can't just do that, channel all of the released energy into the energy-planes? Frankly, tearing up huge tracts of land is rather wasteful of power we could focus elsewhere!"

Darkwind opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, then got a thoughtful look on his face and shut it again. One of the new gryphons, a burly hawk-type, clacked his beak thoughtfully. "If we concssentrrrated the powerrr in that plane, we could do morrre with lesss enerrrgy than the Cataclyssssm itssself requirrred."

"Or more specifically, on the 'edge' between planes where the waves brush against our world, and cause the physical damage," Elspeth chimed in. The gryphon nodded firmly.

"Which brings us around to the question again, and that is how? We need a focused burst," Sejanes said, "and not a sustained release. Most of us are not used to thinking in those terms; the only focused bursts of energy I'm used to creating are lightning strikes and similar unpleasantness. Or Final Strikes, but the mage who does one isn't going to survive the experience, and I'd like to survive."

Lo'isha looked very, very thoughtful and stood up, clearing his throat and getting everyone's attention. All activity slowed and stopped, and attention went to the Shin'a'in.

"For the sake of clarity, I am going to impart something that some of you may already know," he said. "This was once a closely-guarded secret among my people, but there is a time when secrets need to be revealed. After the Cataclysm, all of the people formerly known as the Kaled'a'in—"

"Except for Clan k'Leshya—" interrupted a k'Leshya mage.

"Yes, except for k'Leshya—gathered at the edge of the crater that had once been their homeland—which was also the place where Urtho's Tower had stood. They divided over how magic was to be dealt with in the future, and became the two cousin-peoples, the Shin'a'in and the Tayledras. To the Hawkbrothers, who chose to follow the ways of the mage still, the Star-Eyed Goddess gave the task of cleansing the lands warped by the magics of the Cataclysm. To the Shin'a'in, who chose to ever after avoid the use of all magics save those of the Shaman, she gave another task." He paused, closing his eyes for a moment. "In exchange for this, she restored our home, and since we were vowed to use no magic, we did not experience the effects of the mage-storms of the time. The task we were given was to guard the Plains from all outsiders. This much is common knowledge. What is not common knowledge is the reason for the task. In the center of the Plains, at a site known only to the Sworn of the four faces of the Goddess, lie the remains of Urtho's Tower. Buried beneath the surface are the weapons Urtho did not and would not use. They are very powerful. And they are still alive and ready for use, according to our traditions. At least one of these should be the very thing that we need."

The Shin'a'in drew his dagger and laid it flat on the table. "It is time to end the Guardianship."

Jaws were dropping all around the table, Karal's not the least.

"Here is the one problem that I foresee—and given that we have our Kaled'a'in brothers and sisters of k'Leshya with us, this may be less of a problem than I had thought," the Sworn One continued. "Once we unearth the weapons' vault, which should still be intact, we will have to search through what is there to find a suitable weapon. And we will have to determine how to make it work, or how to adapt it to our need." He smiled slightly. "Needless to say, Urtho did not leave an inventory nor a book of instructions with them."

Karal realized he had stopped breathing with surprise, and forced himself to take a deep lungful of air.

Treyvan shook his feathers, and nibbled a talon. "I rrrecall a litany, much like the Tayledrrrasss litany of 'frrriendly beassstss,' that we magesss of k'Lessshya arrre all rrrequirred to learrrn."

"The 'Garland of Death,' of course," supplied one of the humans. "That could be an inventory and set of descriptions! But I always thought it was just a memory-exercise with a particularly morbid name—"

"And ssso it isss," Treyvan agreed. "But like ssso many thingsss in ourrr teaching, it hasss morrre than one Purrrpossse, I think."

"Another problem—" said a voice from the door. Firesong strode in, with Silverfox beside him. "I beg your pardon for being late, but I was checking some calculations of my own. Ladies and gentlemen, we knew we were chasing a deadline, but I now know the exact moment of that deadline. How are we to get to the Dhorisha Plains before the breakwater collapses? We have only until a fortnight after Midwinter Day to reach the Plains—in the winter, across two countries. Then we must travel to the center of the Plains, and sort through the contents of this Vault. just how are we to manage that?"

Silence. Then, into the silence, Elspeth spoke.

"There is a permanent Gate near k'Leshya Vale on the rim of the crater," she said. "There must be—Falconsbane vanished from there, and how else—"

"Yes!" An'desha shouted excitedly. "There is, I remember! I know right where it is! But how are we going to reach there from here?"

"Piffle. A trifle," said Sejanes.

Now all eyes turned to him, as he smiled broadly and presented his knowledge to them as a wise old grandfather presenting candy to a room full of children.

"We of the Empire are the Masters of Portals—you call them Gates. We can find them at great distances, we can key into strange Portals, and we can build Portals that are permanent structures. But most of all, we know how to construct them using energies outside of ourselves, or the joined energies of several mages." His smile broadened, and he spread his hands wide. "I can teach even the apprentices among you how to join together with a single Adept to construct such a Portal, and given that another permanent Portal will anchor the other end, we should be able to make it self-sustaining for a limited time. Will that serve as our means to your ruined Tower?"

After all the tumultuous months of bickering, near-blood feud fear, derision, and anger, they held more than just nebulous hope in their hands. Inventive minds, people of different cultures and backgrounds, had come together and despite the friction between them, had held on to reason. It all sounded too easy, to hear it spoken in series—and yet, the pieces had all been there. Once the need was identified, they slipped into formation like well-trained soldiers. Karal was dazed at how nearly they had escaped disaster—

We could still have a disaster, he cautioned himself. Don't count the larks until they are safely fledged.

But. But! If he had not overcome his repugnance and started in motion the negotiations with Tremane—if k'Leshya had waited to send their delegation—if the Sworn-Shaman had decided to leave things in the hands of Jarim—if Elspeth and An'desha had not recalled how Falconsbane had made a miraculous escape from the Shin'a'in Sword-Sworn—

Yet everything had been there, and who was to say that if they had not put this solution together there would not have been another one? Altra and Hansa could jump people in pairs. Or maybe more than pairs—Altra jumped me, An'desha, and Florian at the same time. We might have been able to work out something with Final Strikes, only less drastic. We could have shielded the Heartstones with everything we have, waited until the breakwater failed, endured a single round of the storms, and then gone to the Plains.

No, this was not the only solution, and any of the pieces that had fallen neatly into place could have been replaced by another piece—but just at the moment, it looked as if it was the best solution.

What was important was that everyone who possessed a piece to contribute, had.

Once a start at a solution had been identified, people began volunteering—or declining to volunteer—for the expedition. The usual restless souls volunteered—Firesong, Treyvan and Hydona (who would have flown through fire for a chance to visit Urtho's Tower, or the remains of it), An'desha. There were some surprises—Elspeth and Darkwind declined, planning instead to hold the shielding on the Valdemar Heartstone, and Silverfox volunteered, saying that they had better have someone along with rudimentary Healer knowledge. Florian volunteered ("To stand for Valdemar"). The Shin'a'in Sworn Shaman Lo'isha was going, of course, it was his homeland. The White Winds mages declared themselves out of their depth. Altra was going.

But last of all, Karal was going though he was no mage; An'desha and Altra had both insisted on it, although he could not imagine why they needed him. :Contingency,: Altra had said cryptically.

He only hoped this "contingency" would not involve a situation similar to the one on the Iftel border. Acting as a channel for whatever power that held sway behind those magical barriers—whatever it was that a channel did—had ranked right up with all of the worst personal experiences in his life. He really didn't want to repeat it.

An'desha said that he just wanted Karal as a buffer between himself and Firesong. That was a role easier to handle.

He wanted to stay with Natoli, and his sense of duty warred with his wishes. If Altra wanted him to go, there must be a reason connected with his duties as a Priest. But Natoli needed him, too.

It was finally Natoli herself who solved his dilemma for him.

He went to visit her in her room at Healer's Collegium, and described all the preparations being made for the journey to the remains of the Tower. She listened with interest, as she nursed her bandaged and splinted wrist close to her body.

"I wish I could go," she said wistfully. "Even though I probably wouldn't actually see anything happening. just think of how old that Tower is! Think of what you could learn from inscriptions there if there are any! And what if there are books preserved in there somehow—why, who knows what new tracks they would send us off on!" She sighed, and looked ruefully at the bandages still covering her injuries. "But I can't, and that's that. You're going to be traveling fast to get across the bowl of the Plains in time, and you can't have anyone along who would slow you down."

"What do you mean by, 'you're going to be traveling fast'?" he asked. "No one's ordered me to go."

"No one's ordered you, but I thought you told me that An'desha and Altra both wanted you to go," she replied with surprise.

"They can want as much as they please," he said stubbornly. "I'm making up my own mind on this one. I've had my fill of other people making it up for me."

She frowned. "Are you going with the mages to the Plains or not?" she demanded. "If you don't want to because you don't want to, that's one thing, but you'd better not be wavering on this because of me!"

He was taken aback by the stern tone of her voice, and the hint of anger in her eyes. "Why not?" he asked.

"Because I won't have it, that's why!" she exclaimed. "If Altra wants you to go, doesn't that mean it's your duty to go? I won't have you neglecting your duty just because you want to keep me company! I don't expect or want that kind of behavior out of you, and you'd better not expect or want it out of me!"

Her vehemence left him speechless for a moment, and she filled in the silence.

"My job is to uncover new facts, find new ways of doing things, and sometimes that's dangerous," she continued, calming her tone of voice somewhat. "Well, look what happened with the boiler. I could have been killed!"

"I know—" he said numbly.

"So?" she gazed at him demandingly. "Would you ask me to choose between you and my work?"

If I did, I'd lose her, he realized. She has a right to her work, her life. I don't have a right to ask her to give up any of that.

"No," he replied quietly.

"And I don't and won't ask the same of you," she replied, as her fingers brushed restlessly back and forth along the bandages on her arm. "It's not fair and it's not right. This thing the mages are doing—it's dangerous, isn't it?"

He shivered. "More than dangerous. The Shin'a'in know where the Tower is, of course, and they've been working to uncover the entrance to the Vault since we decided what to do—but once we get in there, we'll be sorting through weapons that are very old, probably unstable, and not all of them are magical in nature. The mechanical weapons may be very unstable, the others think. Then when we find what we're looking for, we aren't sure what, exactly, we're going to be dealing with."

He heard himself saying "we" before he thought about it, and knew she'd noticed the phrasing when she smiled.

"So you're going." She made it a statement.

He sighed. "If Altra wants me along and he's being cryptic, it's because there's something he thinks I might have to do, and it's something he knows I probably wouldn't do if I had any choice." He grimaced. "I'm sure if I don't go, they'll find a way around any problems they encounter, but I'm also sure that it will be easier if I do go. In a case like this—the next best solution might not be good enough."

She reached for his hand with her uninjured one. "You know how you'd feel if this failed because you weren't there."

"If this fails, we're going to be in worse trouble than Hardorn is now," he corrected and shivered. "Think what would happen if the shielding all failed on the Heartstone here."

She blanched, as well she should.

"But we may be worrying at nothing," he went on, "And I may prove to be no more useful than an extra pair of hands to brew tea. If Altra knew I was needed, he wouldn't be giving me a choice. He said I should go as a 'contingency' measure. We've had everyone with any kind of ForeSight trying to probe in the direction of this situation, and none of them can tell us anything. They say that the images are all too confused, and that there is no clear path to the future once they get past the fact that we do find the Vault and we do find the weapons there." As he squeezed her hand, he allowed himself a moment of annoyance. "Now tell me this—what good does it do to be a Priest or to be able to talk with Avatars if neither your God nor the representatives of your Goddess are going to give you any clues?"

Natoli chewed her lip thoughtfully for a moment. "I've been listening to you and An'desha talking about Vkandis and the Star-Eyed, and I wonder if this isn't another one of those cases where there are many choices, and since none of the choices are a Second Cataclysm, They aren't going to help. I mean—they watch while people kill people and let people die all the time, and only take a hand in things once in a while, when it will make a big difference down the road. The rest of the time, people have to do what they feel they should, and accept the results. It's that 'free will' thing again."

He groaned. "I could do with a little more guidance and a little less free will!"

"I couldn't." Once again, she surprised him. "I want to make my own decisions, and if they're the wrong ones, then I'll learn from them. I want to be an adult, not a child. I don't want to be led along the safe path! The safe path is never new, and the safe path never teaches you anything others don't already know!"

Had she always been like this, or had the enforced idleness given her time to think about these things? He was astonished at the clarity and fearlessness of her outlook. "A lot of people wouldn't agree with you," he replied, answering her as seriously as she had spoken. "A great many people would rather have the safe path, and be taken care of. They'd rather have all their answers assured, neatly packaged, with 'the end' put on the last page."

"Then they can look for that neat package, but it's a false one, and they're only fooling themselves." Her eyes were shining, and her color heightened with excitement. "There is no end to questioning, except decay. And I'm not ready to sit and rot, and neither are you."

"You're right, I'm not." He leaned over then, and dared a kiss; her lips were warm and soft and she didn't pull away. "And you're right; I should go. I'll be lonely without you, but I'll go."

Natoli squeezed his hand and whispered, "Be brave, Karal, and be careful. Come back to me."

Sejanes led a group of mixed Herald-Mages and White Winds mages who would be establishing the Gate under his direction and control; as Altra and Hansa had, they were using the old ruin in Companion's Field. "They're going to be worthless when we're done," he'd warned Selenay. "And they're going to be weak as newborn kittens for at least a day." Accordingly, she had sent along a contingent of servants with litters to carry them off when they collapsed. Sejanes had approved.

Now the expedition force stood in knee-deep snow beneath an overcast sky while Sejanes reiterated the plan. "We'll hold the Portal open long enough for you all to get through," he said, squinting into the bright snow glare. "That's all this lot will be good for. We'll reopen it in a fortnight, and you'd better be up on that rim when we do."

"You'll reopen it if you can," muttered one of the k'Leshya mages. "If they don't succeed, you'll have more than the Portal to worry about."

Sejanes ignored that—or perhaps he simply didn't hear it. "If you aren't there, we'll reopen it one more time a fortnight later, then send word to call up search parties down there." He paused and favored the k'Leshya mage with a sharp glance. Perhaps he had heard the mutter. "If, however, the force of your weapon deactivates the Gate at your end, you will have to find another way back here."

"In other words," Firesong said, laughing, "we walk home."

:Not precisely.:

Heads snapped up all over the group, as even those who did not have Mindspeech reacted to that voice in their heads.

A Companion stallion emerged from the trees to their left, leading a group of four more, all of them young, all nervously tossing their heads, and all wearing saddles and halters. Not the fancy tack of a Companion on search for his Chosen, but the everyday stuff a working Companion used.

:Rolan would like you to relay the rest, Karal,: Florian said, as he nudged Karal's shoulder with his nose. :He can Mindspeak with anyone he wishes to, but it takes a lot of effort, and this will be faster.:

"Ah—this is Rolan, he's the Queen's Own Companion" Karal said hastily.

:These are four of the fastest and strongest of the Companions who have not Chosen Heralds, and they have been picked by Rolan out of the volunteers to serve as mounts for those who need them.:

"Unpartnered Companions volunteered to carry the humans of our group," Karal interpreted. "These are the best." He knew from his own experience that no horse could ever keep up with a Companion, and if somehow the others had missed that particular piece of information, they'd soon figure it out!

:Rolan has made assignments.: The stallion tossed his head, and a muscular male with a short mane and tail stepped forward and bowed to the Sworn Shaman. :This is Kayka.:

"Your mount is called Kayka, sir," Karal told that worthy, who bowed to the stallion.

"I am honored, Kayka." Lo'isha's tone made it clear that he meant his words, they were not just for politeness' sake.

Two mares with artistically flowing manes and tails tripped forward together, stopping in front of Firesong and Silverfox. :Twin sisters, Senta and Sartra. Senta will take Firesong, and says—:

"I can hear what she says, thank you, Florian," Firesong interrupted dryly. "And I assure you, I actually do know how to travel lightly. Remember? I came here with only what my dyheli friend could carry." He turned to the Companion and bowed to her as deeply as the shaman had bowed to Kayka, though with a touch more irony. "I am grateful for your assistance, Senta, and I appreciate your beauty."

Silverfox already had one hand on Sartra's shoulder, and appeared to be deep in mental conversation with her. The last Companion, another female, slim, with a long forelock half hiding her eyes, stepped shyly forward, and scraped at the snow in front of An'desha with one hoof.

:This is Idry,: said Florian. :She is my younger sister, and was the first to volunteer.:

An'desha smiled. "Then I shall be twice as glad to have her company, Florian."

"Well, that certainly solves your transportation problem," Elspeth said dryly. "If they can't get you there as fast as a gryphon can fly, it can't be done at all."

"Rrr, ssso we will rrracsse?" Treyvan asked, then gape-grinned. Hydona bumped her beak against his side.

"Excellent, I admit that I am very pleased," Sejanes called, "Now, can we get on with this?"

After seeing so many Gates opening over the past several days, even the heart-stopping magic of Gate-construction felt like a routine. Karal paid no attention to the goings-on, taking the time instead to make certain that his pack was secure and that Florian's saddle and halter were comfortable. It would be a long trek down to the bowl of the Plains with no place to stop on the trail, and anything loose could rub poor Florian raw. The others were taking their packs and securing them behind the saddles. Treyvan and Hydona already had their flying-harness on, and whatever gear they thought they would need was fastened to it. Jerven and Lytha, their half grown youngsters, would be staying behind. According to Hydona, it was time for them to start serious fledgling lessons, and those were best given by someone who was not their parent.

Given what a full-time job those two were, Karal wondered if the two might not be using this as a chance for a vacation away from them!

He completed his inspection at about the same time that the mages made contact with the anchoring Gate in the ruins above the Plains. When he looked up, it was to see snow-covered heaps of tumbled stones below a sky so blue and clear it hurt to look at it, all framed in the arch of weathered stones on their side.

"Quickly, please!" Sejanes shouted. "We can't hold this all day, you know!"

Karal mounted, glad to feel a saddle beneath him again, and started for the Gate, but Treyvan and Hydona were already there ahead of him, dashing through with alacrity. He wondered why they were so eager, then remembered—Clan k'Leshya had settled there, in the ruins as well as in the old Vale! They were probably eager to see some of their old friends before taking the trek to Urtho's Tower.

He followed right on their heels, with An'desha behind him. He had never actually crossed large distances by means of a Gate before, and he braced himself for the unpleasant stomach-tumbling sensations of a Jump.

But there was nothing of the kind; he felt for a split second as if he was falling, and there was a strange darkness that was laced with fiery multicolored ribbons of power and light all around him. Then Florian's feet came to rest on the stone on the other side with a little jolt, as if the Companion had made a small hop over an obstacle in their path.

:Like that better than jumping, do you?: Although Altra had not been with them on the Valdemar side, now he appeared.

"Much," he said shortly, as Florian moved out of the way for the rest to come through. Although snow lay everywhere, it was cleared away from the places that had once been streets in what looked like the ruins of a substantial town. Though still in ruins, there were signs of habitation here and there—places where walls showed signs of rebuilding, and farther in the distance, conical, shingled roofs poking up above the snow-covered piles of rubble. Just at the moment, there were gryphons flying in from every direction to meet their two. There were at least a dozen, but it seemed as if there were hundreds; gryphons in a group, Karal soon learned, were not quiet.

This was not a social gathering, however; the gryphons landed, had a brief conference while the rest of the party traversed the Gate, then flew off again. Without knowing where in relation to the Plains this ruin was, Karal had no idea which way they were going, but their flight was purposeful, as if they each had a task to perform.

The Shaman was the last through the Gate, and it closed behind him.

"The way isss clearrr," Hydona called from her perch atop a ruined wall. "The Ssssworrrd-Ssssworrrn arrre all along it and will rrride with usss in rrrelays. "Grryphonsss fly ahead to ssscout. The worrrrssst parrrt isss the trrrail down; icsssed, they sssay."

Lo'isha shrugged. "That is to be expected, but I am glad our white friends have agreed to bear us. I am more confident with them than I would be with even the best Shin'a'in stock."

Evidently he knew precisely where he was; Kayka set out at a brisk walk, and the rest followed, except for Treyvan and Hydona, who took to the air. Karal and An'desha took the rearmost position.

There were gryphons overhead constantly; as the trail wove in and around the ruined buildings, Karal became completely lost. He would have been certain that the shaman was, too, but with all the help in the air, that was extremely unlikely.

Soon enough, they turned another corner, and suddenly there was nothing in front of them but blue sky. They had come to the edge of the ruins, and before and below them lay the Dhorisha Plains.

Karse was a land of mountains, so Karal was no stranger to height—but it is one thing to look at something on a map, and quite another to stand on the edge of a sheer precipice and look down—and down—and down—

Intellectually, he had known that the edge of the crater that formed the rim above the Plains was hundreds of lengths above its floor. Now he knew it with his gut, and he gulped.

Florian seemed nonchalant. :It's not that bad. Take a closer look; there's a switchback trail going all the way down.:

He didn't really like the look of the trail any better than the long drop. It was barely wide enough for a single rider;, they would have to go single-file the entire way, and may Vkandis help anyone who slipped.

:I'll see you at the bottom—unless you'd like to Jump with me now,: Altra said smugly. :Feel like a Jump?:

Thinks I won't take him up on it, hmm? "Sir!" he called to the shaman, "Altra has volunteered to jump us down, one Companion and rider at a time!"

:I did not!: Altra cried indignantly, but it was too late. Lo'isha turned to them both with a look of grave gratitude, and it was not possible to back down without looking ungracious and ungraceful. That, Karal knew, was something that Altra's pride would never permit.

"If you would be so kind, Firecat," he said in his deep, impressive voice, "I do not like the look of this trail. I would rather we did not lose anyone to something that could be prevented."

Altra grumbled mentally at Karal, but accepted the task with outward grace. :Just for that, you can go last, when I'm tired,: he added, as he jumped up on the pack behind the Shaman.

Then they were gone—and a tiny dot appeared against the snow far below them.

It took exponentially less time, even going down pair by pair, than it would have if they'd taken the trail. And even though Altra was tired when he got to Karal, and his control was a bit shaky, the resulting Jump was no worse than the ones he'd made getting out of Hardorn. That resulted in nausea, but not the gut-racking illness that had been the result of the flight from Tremane's study.

And when he "landed" beside the others, it was clear that the Shin'a'in had been there before them, breaking a clear trail through the relatively light snow so that they could proceed as fast as possible without worrying about getting lost.

When Karal looked up, he saw circling dots that were the gryphons. When he looked outward, he saw moving dots that must be the Sword-Sworn, riding a protective patrol ahead and to both sides of them. He'd wondered how they were going to manage without supplies, for no one had packed anything in the way of food or shelter and not even a Companion could cross to the center of the Dhorisha Plains in a single day; now it came to him. The Shin'a'in and the gryphons would take care of that, if they had not already.

Lo'isha looked about with satisfaction—even if his lips were a little white. "The trail is clear, the wind is at our backs!" he cried. "Now, let us ride!"

After the first day, Karal looked back on the grueling trip he and Ulrich had made from Karse to Haven with nostalgia. Florian saved him as much as he could—and indeed a Companion's pace was blissful compared to that of a horse—

But this was still riding from an hour past sunup to far past sundown, in bitterly cold weather, without a break. Companions did not need rest the way that horses did, and the shaman saw fit to make use of that endurance.

The brilliantly blue sky of day became a huge black bowl studded with enormous stars by night. When the half moon rose, it flooded the featureless Plains with white light that had the effect of making Karal feel even colder than before. But the flatness of the Plains did have one advantage—they saw the fires and torches of their resting place from a vast distance away, as the only spots of warm color in all the icy whiteness. Just looking at the pinpricks of warm yellow gave Karal enough strength to hold onto Florian's saddle. His cold fingers had long since grown too numb for any pretense of holding to the reins.

When at last they reached the shelters, they found a single round felt tent awaiting them, with torches all around it, a fire in front of it, and black-clad Shin'a'in tending a stewpot over the fire. Karal fell out of the saddle rather than dismounting; he stumbled toward the tent, and Florian followed him right inside.

Evidently the Shin'a'in were prepared for the idea that the Companions should share their shelter; the tent, lit by three oil lamps suspended from the roof poles, was divided in half, with half of the floor covered in old, damaged carpets, with piles of hay and grain and leather buckets of water on top of the carpets. Treyvan and Hydona were already there, fast asleep, curled together in a single ball of feathers with no sign of limbs or heads. The other half had bright new carpets with bedrolls laid out neatly for them, in a semicircle with a charcoal brazier at their feet. It might not have been very warm by the standards of the Palace, but compared to the bitter cold outside, it was quite toasty. There was a Shin'a'in Sword-Sworn waiting inside, unsaddling and wiping down the Companions and throwing warm blankets over them as they ate and drank. Florian joined the others. As the last human inside, Karal found the others already wrapped up in their blankets, eating bowls of stew and sipping at mugs of something that steamed. Karal didn't know what it was, nor did he care. He took the last of the bedrolls, pulled off his boots and shoved his legs down into the warmth of the blankets, and accepted the bowl and mug handed to him with a murmur of thanks.

Then he ate as quickly as he could shovel the stew in with the aid of a piece of tough, flat bread. The tea had an odd, astringent taste, but it was curiously soothing to his raw throat.

As soon as he had finished both tea and stew, the same Shin'a'in took bowl and cup away from him. The others were already curled in their bedrolls for sleep, and he followed their example. The Shin'a'in blew out the oil lamps on his way out of the tent, leaving them in darkness.

At some point before he went to sleep, Altra appeared, lying beside him and half over him, creating a swath of heat at his back. The Firecat purred quietly and said just one thing.

:Karal... I'm proud of you.:

With that added comfort—in more ways than the merely physical—he fell instantly asleep.

The Shin'a'in woke them before dawn, and they broke their fast with more stew, bread, and tea. Then they were in the saddle again, and pushing outward.

The second day was a repetition of the first, as was the third. Karal's eyes grew sore from the reflection of sun on snow, and from the red eyes that met his every time anyone—except the shaman and An'desha—turned to face him, the others must be suffering the same. The cold, dry air made his lips crack and chap, and his throat sore. After the second day, Lo'isha gave them each a little vial of aromatic oil to moisten their lips with, and advised them that they might want to anoint their whole faces. Karal took him up on the suggestion; Firesong resisted at first, but by midafternoon, with his cheeks flaming from wind-chapping, he had given in and done the same.

Karal lost track of time; he was either riding or sleeping—too much of the former, not enough of the latter. The landscape they traversed was always the same; not quite flat, but close enough for a young man from the mountains, rolling hill after snow-covered, rolling hill, with scarcely a tree or a bush in sight except where they marked the passage of watercourses or the location of a spring. The cold numbed all of him, and he never was really warm except the moment that they awoke him. Firesong looked miserable, Silverfox looked resigned, and only An'desha and Lo'isha seemed to thrive.

But then, this is—was—his home.

The gryphons rarely appeared, and when they did, they were fixated on the goal and could talk of nothing else. At last—after how many days he could not tell, that goal loomed up on the horizon.

It was singularly unprepossessing, for something they had chased across half a continent—an odd, melted stub of silvery-gray rock, poking up out of the top of yet another rolling hill.

Then, when it didn't get any closer, he realized that it must be much larger than he had thought.

Then he finally spotted the tiny dots of more Shin'a'in swarmed about the base, and the equally tiny dots of two gryphons circling it, and he understood how large it was.

There was a long pile of something dark against the snow at the foot of the Tower-rich, turned earth. It looked as if the Shin'a'in had been digging for something.

The closer they got, the more his skin crawled. The Tower simply didn't look melted, it had been melted. The great force that fueled the Cataclysm had made the rock of the Tower run like liquid wax. And they were about to play with forces worse and more hazardous than the one that had done this, weapons that the Mage of Silence, who had created this, thought were too dangerous to use!

What am I doing here? he thought, aghast.

It would not be the last time he had that thought.

They rested and slept for what remained of that day and all suicidal to the next night; it would be stupid, and perhaps suicidal to enter the Vault with their minds fogged with fatigue. But the moment the sun rose, so did they, and one of the Sword-Sworn led them to the opening the Shin'a'in had been working on since this expedition had been decided on.

The old door to the Tower lay somewhere beneath several hundred tons of melted, fused rock. The Shin'a'in had taken a more direct route to the Vault beneath the remains of the Tower. There must have been hundreds of them working on it to get it done in so short a period of time.

They had burrowed down in a long slanting tunnel into the side of the hill supporting the Tower, straight to the ancient Vault wall. That was only stone blocks mortared together, and the mortar, after so many centuries, was old and weak. Urtho had never bothered to put any sort of armoring or defensive measures on the wall of the Vault—after all, anyone who got this far would still have to dig a hole in the full sight of the guards, the army, the Kaled'a'in, the gryphons....

Not likely.

The Shin'a'in, with advice from the miners of k'Leshya, and additional help from the gryphons, had been working nonstop; together they had made an impressive tunnel, chipped out the weak mortar between the stones, and pried out enough of the latter to create an entrance fully large enough for Treyvan and Hydona, not to mention Florian, who insisted on coming below as well. The other Companions were perfectly happy to remain outside and rest, and Karal caught them casting many glances askance at Florian as he prepared to descend the precipitous tunnel with the party of mages. They all had lanterns, but the light didn't help the feeling of being trapped beneath tons of earth and stone. The tunnel itself had been shored up quite expertly, and for a moment Karal wondered where they had gotten the timbers.

The gryphons, of course. They must have flown them in from k'Leshya.

A formidable task, equal to the task of digging this tunnel.

Karal concentrated on keeping his breathing steady, reminding himself that as long as his lantern flame burned brightly, there was more than enough air down here for them all to breathe.

At least I'm not cold. There's no wind blowing. There's no snow-glare.

How much longer does this tunnel go on?

He hadn't begun by counting his steps, but he started at that point. Fifty... one hundred... one hundred and fifty shouldn't they have reached the wall by now?

His chest felt tight; was the light a little dimmer? The flame of his candle a little lower?

:Karal. I'm right behind you.: The voice in his mind warned him, so when a head bumped against his thigh, he didn't jump and screech. :It's all right. There's air, and if anything happens, I can Jump you out.:

Immediately the invisible bands tightening around his chest loosened. of course! Altra could get him out, even if the roof collapsed! He relaxed, and the flame in his lantern brightened again. Or perhaps it had never been dimming in the first place.

"We're at the Vault."

The shaman's voice, muffled by all the other bodies between him and the Shin'a'in, alerted him so that he didn't run into An'desha when An'desha stopped.

The line ahead of him shuffled forward, step by step. "Watch yourself," An'desha warned, as the light from his lantern caught on the regular shapes of stone blocks. "There's debris in the way."

An'desha moved forward and vanished into a hole a gryphon could barely squeeze through. There was a litter of stone pieces and other debris in front of the hole, as if it had just today been made. Perhaps it had!

He stepped over the edge of the hole, following the gleam of light—and stepped into another world.

The floor was smoothly polished white stone with a pattern, a compass rose of eight points inset in it, made of a rose-colored granite. This was a large, round room with white stone walls that rose in a conical shape to a point about two stories above their heads. Hanging down from the center by a silver chain was a large sphere of crystal, which shone softly in the reflected light from the lanterns.

Karal stared at it in awe.

"What is it?" he asked. "A weapon? Something like a Heartstone?"

Firesong shook his head as he also stared; they stood in a loose circle with their mouths agape, gazing upward. Finally Treyvan laughed, and said, "Much sssimplerrr," and called out a word in a language that was not quite Shin'a'in and not quite Tayledras.

Obediently, the globe lit up from within. Karal cried out and shielded his eyes, but he needn't have bothered. The radiance was remarkably soft, and left only a faint afterimage that rapidly faded.

"It isss a lamp," Treyvan said superfluously.

Now that they could see clearly, they doused their lanterns and took a look around. This, obviously, was not the Vault itself, but probably a workroom to one side, for there was the dark gap of an open door in the wall. Firesong was the nearest, so he was the first one through it, where he stopped, just inside, blocking the door.

"Well," his dry voice echoed back, "it would be nice if I could see. What was that command?" Before anyone could answer him, he tried several versions of the word Treyvan had used, and finally hit on the right intonation. His form was silhouetted for a moment as the light flared to life, then dimmed to the twin of the first.

"I believe," the Tayledras Adept drawled, "we have found what we were looking for."

He moved out of the way, leaving space for the others to enter behind him.

Karal lagged back; for one thing, he was not sure he wanted to see what they were looking for. For another, he knew very well he wouldn't know what he was looking at!

So he allowed all the others to crowd in ahead of him, and trailed behind. He expected exclamations, but he heard nothing but a few whispers.

When he passed the threshold himself, he understood why.

This was a huge room, but practically empty except for four of the crystal lights suspended from the ceiling, and a single floating barge in the middle. Faint outlines in the ceiling above the barge suggested a door or hatchway there.

Around the periphery of the room were fifteen more doors, all of them closed.

Where were the weapons? Had all of them been taken away?

"The weapons must be behind each of those doors, one to a room," Firesong said authoritatively. "If I were holding dangerous objects, that's what I'd do with them. That way if you had an accident with one, it would be confined to the room it was in and not spread to the others."

"You begin to sound like a career artificer, Firesong," Silverfox replied. "That makes entirely too much sense."

Firesong turned to the nearest door on his right, and continued talking. "What's more, I'll bet the room we were in held a weapon that Urtho did use, and the reason that the barge is in here is to take large or bulky creations up to where you can—or could, I mean—move them out the doors."

"I wonder why this place even exists," An'desha said, as Firesong checked to see if the door was locked before he tried opening it. "You'd think that a force that would melt the Tower would destroy everything, wouldn't you?"

"Maybe because this was right below the event, none of the force went downward," Karal hazarded, trying to remember some of what he'd learned from the artificers.

"Perhaps the shields on the Vault disintegrated, but absorbed all of the force in the process," Silverfox guessed.

"Perhaps the Star-Eyed had something to do with it," Lo'isha said with great dignity.

"Perrrhapsss all of thossse rrreasssonsss, perrrhapsss none," Treyvan said with impatience. "Isss the doorrr locked orrr not?"

"Just stuck," Firesong replied, finally shoving it open. He spoke the word that lit the lamp and gave an exclamation of disappointment.

"Come look for yourself, but I don't think this one is going to do us any good," he said, waving them over.

Once again Karal held back, but on his own viewing, he was inclined to agree with Firesong. This room contained a conglomerate of bizarre parts, from coils of wire to animal skulls with jeweled eyes, all woven together in a crazed spider-web of colored string, ribbon, hair-thin wire, and rawhide thongs.

"Good God, why skulls?" Karal exclaimed, revolted.

"Perhaps because they had been used in shamanic ceremonies and so now were attuned to power of a sort he needed," Lo'isha hazarded. "Not Kaled'a'in ceremonies, but Urtho made use of the magics he had learned from many peoples, and many peoples were his allies."

"I don't know about you, but I don't even want to touch that," Firesong said as he edged back outside. "I don't know what it does, and I'm not sure it would still do it at this point—and even if it did, how much of it would fall into dust if you brushed against it?"

"Trrrue," Treyvan said, taking care to tuck his wings in as he moved back outside. With one accord, they closed the door with the greatest of care and moved on to the next room.

By the time they were finished, they had eliminated eight of the fifteen possibilities. None were quite as bizarre as the cow-skull construction, but no one wanted to take any chances on them. Two were featureless boxes that had even Treyvan shaking his head in bafflement, one was an unidentifiable object that resembled nothing so much as a spill of liquid caught and frozen in midair. Two more were delicate sculptures of wires and gemstones that they were all afraid to touch lest they fall to pieces, and the remaining three Treyvan recognized from his litany as being simple weapons of dreadful mass destruction of life and property—not at all suited to their purposes, for there was nothing magical about the energy released when these things were triggered.

That left seven possibilities.

With each of the objects was a metal plaque, identifying how to destroy it, but nothing else about its nature, except the single line, "You cannot use this weapon without killing yourself. Neither could I. Be wise, and be rid of it." Each plaque was signed with Urtho's name and sigil.

They gathered rubbings of all these plaques, together with a crude drawing of each object and the number of the room it was in—counting the empty room as number one and going sunwise—and sat down together in the floating barge to discuss what they had.

"We have three days to decide which device and how to work it, one day to set up and practice, and that's all," Firesong warned. "If we don't succeed by then, working with the assumption that the waves going out can be made to match the speed of the ones coming in, the breakwater will go down. Irrevocably. Without that to break up the force, the next mage-storm through here might well trigger one or more of these things."

"Sssurely not—" Treyvan said, but he did not sound certain.

"Are you willing to stand around here and wait to see? I'm not, Firesong said bluntly. "Frankly, I didn't think we'd find more than one or two of Urtho's weapons existing; I never dreamed there'd be this many that were still intact. It seems to me that if we don't succeed here, we'd better evacuate the Plains and k'Leshya."

"I wish I didn't feel the same way," the shaman said with reluctance. "I had not expected to find so many lethal objects here either. If one or even two were activated, the Tower and the physical containments still here would probably keep the damage to a small area—but if three or more went—" He shuddered, his face white.

"Right," Firesong nodded. "And we are making a lot of assumptions about whether they'd 'go off,' for that matter. Some of them might be the magical equivalent of a slow acid, some might simply shred things randomly for a long period of time."

"Then let's get on with this and make a decision!" An'desha exclaimed, his nervousness evident in the high pitch of his voice.

But a few hours later, it was clear that they had another problem.

Between the litany and the instructions for disposal, it was possible to deduce what each of the remaining seven objects did, and they were able to eliminate three more of the seven. The trouble was, when they had ranked the remaining four in order of suitability, they came to another, unexpected snag.

The language that the k'Leshya thought was the purest Kaled'a'in, that they had cherished—they fondly assumed—as unchanged for centuries, was anything but pure and unchanged.

"Look, we have three words here that all mean 'explosive'!" Firesong burst out. "Your version of Kaled'a'in has two of them, Treyvan, ko'chekarna and chekarna and from the destruction instructions I think we've got a third, ri'chekarna! So which is right? We have to know or we're likely to get our number one choice going off right in our faces!"

"I—do not know," Treyvan said helplessly. "The language hasss ssshifted.…"

"Languages do, over time," Lo'isha said ironically. "Your mistake was to assume that since the Kaled'a'in were among peoples that avoided change, your language and ways were immutable. We need a scholar in ancient Kaled'a'in—"

"Or someone with ForeSight, who could look at each of these things and determine which one we can use safely!" Karal said suddenly, as he looked directly at Florian and Altra.

The two looked at each other, as if they were consulting silently. The little group stared at both of them in an expectant hush. It seemed to take forever before Florian turned back to them, but it was Altra who "spoke," although his eyes were directed off past Karal's shoulder, as if he was concentrating on something.

:I cannot bring someone here in time. Florian cannot reach that far with his mind.: Karal's heart fell.

"I can't build a Gate that will reach that far," Firesong reminded them, "And neither can An'desha."

"Then we arrre rrright back to the beginning." Treyvan's ear-tufts flattened against his head. "Back to language, a ssset of verrrssse that hasss ssshifted meaningsss overrr the yearsss, and guesssesss which can get usss all killed."

"No—" An'desha corrected, his eyes half-closed in thought. "We do have more than that. Mage-Sight should tell us something about the power sources, and that should tell us if it's something we ought to avoid."

"It might tell usss otherrr thingsss asss well," Treyvan put in, his ear-tufts rising again.

"And let usss make the bessst transsslationsss we can," Hydona added. "If we have the choicssse between a devicsse with a good trrranssslation and one with a half trrranssslation, need I sssuggessst which we usssse?"

Firesong rubbed eyes so tired and puffy they were mere slits. In the end, there was only one device they could use, and it was not their first or even second choice. Karal had spent the time making himself useful while the mages pondered translations and probed the devices with every tool available to them. Precious time was lost while they did so, but none of them were wasting any time either. They hardly slept, and ate only when Karal or Silverfox put food in their hands.

And in the end, the shaman himself used his powers, ill-suited as they were to such a task, attempting to help with a selection. His "inspired guess" matched the choice of the mages.

"There's only one problem," Firesong said glumly, eyeing the unprepossessing pyramid of silvered metal. "This thing is going to kill whoever activates it. According to Treyvan's litany and what I've gleaned from the destruction information, the rest of us would be able to get far enough away to avoid incineration, but not the person setting it off. It can't be set off magically, we don't have anyone who can move things with his mind with us, and when it goes, not even Altra would be able to jump out in time. Assuming he had two hands with four fingers and a thumb each, which he doesn't."

"Unlessss—" Treyvan prompted.

Firesong shrugged. "I don't see where that could make a difference. The fatal flaw in this thing, and the reason Urtho never used it, is that there's spillover energy in the physical plane. Incandescent, white-hot spillover energy."

Karal looked from one to the other. "Unless what?" he prompted.

Firesong grimaced, and Treyvan answered. "Unless the perrrssson trrrigerrring it isss a Mage-Channel. He might be able to channel the ssspilloverrr enerrrgy to the enerrrgyplanesss wherrre it isss sssupposssed to go."

"Yes, well, there's just one little problem with that," Firesong snapped. "He stands even odds of getting burned out—if he succeeds—and he'll need to be completely shielded, and if he loses control, he'll still get killed along with whoever is shielding him! That assumes we had someone who was tough enough to—"

He stopped, suddenly realizing that Karal had gone white as snow, and An'desha, Florian, and Altra were all staring at him. The muscles in his throat tensed as he swallowed.

"I'm a channel," he said, in a whisper.

Now Firesong stared at him, too, his mind whirling. "You're a fool if you think you can do this," he said harshly. "If you thought the Iftel border was hard, it's nothing compared to channeling this thing! You're not trained, you can't even see mage-energy—

"But I am a channel," the young man persisted, though he was still pale and drawn. "And I've been told that channeling is instinctive, not learned."

"You're going to kill yourself!" Firesong shouted, unable to bear the tension. "You're out of your mind! We can't help you. You'd have to do this alone! The best we could do is shield you!"

"Is there any other choice?" Karal countered, looking each of them in the eyes. One by one, they each shook their heads. Finally, he came back to Firesong, who clenched his teeth angrily.

"Firesong—we all knew when we came here that we might not come back. We have all resolved in our own ways that we are willing to make sacrifices for even a chance of saving our homelands." Karal's facial expression looked like that of a boy ready to cry, but in the way he held his chin up and back straight, he acted like a grown man facing a moment of truth. "I know that if I have to give my life in this, I will be welcome in the Sunlord's arms."

How dare the whelp put him in this position? How dare he volunteer to get himself turned to a cinder before Firesong had a chance to get his own feelings straight?

"Damn you—" he began, but Karal interrupted him with a wan smile.

"I don't think your curse is capable of overriding Vkandis' blessing, Hawkbrother," he chided gently. "But if there is no other choice, I suggest you take it back anyway. I'm going to need all the help I can get."

"I take it back. But may all your children turn out like you!" Firesong exploded, unable to come up with a better "curse" to vent his feelings. He turned violently away and escaped to the empty chamber to pace. His gut was a solid knot of tensions, his neck felt as stiff as old rawhide.

How can he do this? He's right, but how can he? This is insane! An'desha will never forgive me!

Soft footsteps at the entrance to the chamber warned him that he was not alone.

"I have to, you know," Karal said quietly. "I had the feeling it might come to something like this. Altra kept saying he wanted me along for 'contingency'; I think he must have meant that there was an equal chance you'd have been able to use one of the other devices." A soft sigh. "The ForeSeers all said that the futures were so tangled they couldn't see past us getting here. There was always a chance that something else might have worked out."

"Maybe. If we had more time to study them. If I wasn't reasonably certain the wave front of the next mage-storm was going to get in here as well as everywhere else—this is the origin-point, after all. Hellfires! Where else would the energy go but here! And this place can't keep taking a battering without at least one of these devices going on its own!" He" stopped pacing and turned to look into Karal's white and, strained face. "I do not want you to do this!"

"I know," Karal told him.

"But if you're going to insist—by your gods and mine, I'm not going to stand around outside this place and leave you to do it alone." In this much, at least, he could assuage his own conscience. "I'll shield you—"

"We'll all shield him," An'desha said, coming up behind Karal. Firesong started to protest, then shrugged. It was their choice, too.

All right." He took a deep breath and tried to reckon the time passed. "How much time do we have left? I know it can't be much."

"About half a day." Karal sounded steady enough. Maybe he could do it. "I've been keeping very careful track. Every mark we delay means the closer the wave front will be to Haven and the Heartstone there. Tremane's people can weather one more storm, maybe two—"

"But the shielding on the Stone might go down, not to mention all the other Vale Stones, I know, I know." He suppressed a wave of irritation at Karal for restating the obvious. He let his irritation show as he answered in a growl. "All right, then, if that's the way you all want it, who am I to argue?"

An'desha looked for a moment as if he might retort, but only turned back to the main room. Karal followed him, leaving Firesong to trail behind, feeling as if he had somehow lost an argument, even though there hadn't really been one.

They spent their remaining time in rehearsal for the moment. Aya chittered at him from atop the pack as Firesong rummaged deep into the side pocket. He noticed that he was not alone in surreptitiously going to his belongings for stimulants to keep him wide awake and alert; such things were dangerous and they would all pay later—if they survived this—but every mage knew there would be times when there were not enough hours to rest before a vital working and carried a packet or two of such things. He even caught the shaman chewing a mouthful of something with an expression of distaste that told him it was not dried meat.

Tayledras stimulants had the peculiar quality of setting everything emotional at a distance, enabling Firesong to focus on the purely intellectual project at hand. The mental exercises that sharpened the mind came to him naturally, like a musician practicing his fingerings quicker and quicker. Diagrams of light shone against his lids as he concentrated, eyes closed—symbols for Vale, Veil, Heartstone, ley-line, shield, absorber, deflector, suspensor, buffer-current and anchor, circle and square, star and sphere—they all appeared and interwove. And it occurred to him, as soon as he felt that distancing of his inner turmoil, that there was a reason for that pattern in the floor of every storage chamber. The compass rose.

In his peculiarly exalted state, he leaped straight from flash of intuition to a plan, with no conscious reasoning in between.

"Look at this!" he said, as they entered the chamber for a final rehearsal. "Look, the device is in the exact middle of that inlaid compass rose—it can't be by accident! This is a shielding-circle!"

An'desha tilted his head to one side and frowned. "It doesn't look like anything in my memory—" he said tentatively.

"Of course it doesn't," Firesong interrupted impatiently. "Your memories are all of Urtho's arch rival, and if there was a way to do something the opposite of Urtho, you can be certain Ma'ar took it! The positioning is perfect, and I'll bet there's an amplification-effect when we set ourselves up and begin the shielding. Look here—the angle from point to point is a factor of eight, with eight points, and sixty-four marker triangles point in. Look at the cupping of those scallops around the center—I'll bet you all my silk that they're collectors. Check the angles of deflection from point to point, and they'll all line up to buttress each other."

An'desha looked at Treyvan and Hydona for confirmation. The female gryphon wagged her head from side to side. "It could be," she admitted. "Sssuch thingsss arrre known. Urrrtho wasss known forrr being rrresssourcsseful enough forrr sssixty men, beforrre brrreakfassst. It would be in hisss ssstyle to put sssuch thingsss herrre."

"Then you two—take North and South," he ordered, feeling as if this must be the proper configuration, though he did not know why. "Florian and Altra, East and West." That put all the nonhumans on cardinal points, which made a certain sense given what the gryphons had told him about Urtho and how he cherished his nonhuman creations. "Karal, stand in the center with the pyramid. An'desha, you go between Altra and Treyvan in the Northeast. An'desha, I'll be opposite you—"

But here he stopped, for there were only Lo'isha and Silverfox left, and both were shaking their heads. "I know nothing of shielding," the Shaman began—

Then, with a sigh and a rush of wings on a wind that existed somewhere other than here and now, the other two places were taken. Light filled the room, and Firesong's heart leaped straight into his throat.

The last pieces of the puzzle. They have had a hand in this, too—

Standing in the Northwest and Southeast were—

No—

Tre'valen—

"We have come to help in this," said one of the two creatures, part flame, part bird, and part man, with a face that had haunted his few nightmares since the moment he had found the lifeless body of the Shin'a'in shaman struck down by Mornelithe Falconsbane. "We are still as much of your world as of Hers, and this is, after all, Her chosen land. She wishes it protected, as do we."

Karal's eyes glowed with an emotion that Firesong could put no name to, but there was no mistaking the emotion on An'desha's face. It was pure, unleavened joy. And Firesong knew, truly, and with a settling of peace in his heart, that he had not "lost" An'desha to any human or any human arguments. There was no use arguing when someone heard the call of the Star-Eyed in his soul. That siren song was as unbreakable as any lifebond and as enduring.

The other bird-human-spirit spoke. "An'desha knows—we have been with you, aiding where we could—but the Star-Eyed helps only those with the bravery to help themselves. We have come of our own volition, and live or die, we stand beside you."

Lo'isha was on his knee with his head bowed, and the creature who had once been Tre'valen, himself a shaman, gestured to him to rise. The shaman did so, but wearing an expression so awestruck that Firesong doubted he would say anything as long as the two Avatars were there.

But as Firesong turned his attention back to the circle, he realized he knew what that look in Karal's eyes was.

It was the look of someone who knows he is about to die, but whose faith is certain and confirmed and who is no longer afraid of the prospect. "Fey," some called it.

Perhaps, as Stefen bid him farewell in the mountains of the North, Vanyel had looked that way.…

But it was too late now to do anything about it. The last few moments were trickling away.

"Raise your shields!" he shouted, his throat tight, as he brought up his own. To Mage-Sight, each of them now stood within a glowing sphere of rainbow light, and as he had somehow divined, each point on the compass rose glowed as well. The light radiating from each of them reflected from the angled patterns outlined in the stone. It looked as though, if they survived this, he wouldn't owe anyone his silk.

"Link shields!" he cried out, before his throat closed too much to speak. There was a moment of faltering, then all of the shields formed into a thick ring of light surrounding Karal and the waist-high pyramid in the center. The young man closed his eyes and placed his hands carefully on two of the sides, fitting his fingers into the depressions placed there for that purpose.

But once again, as Firesong had guessed, older magics were activated by the energies of their shields. The design on the floor began to glow, sending up eight arms of light that pulled the shields with them, until they all met in a point, making a cone of radiance that echoed the conical shape of the walls around them. Instead of being merely ringed with shielding, Karal was encased in it, and the energy that he would release would be funneled straight up by the shields.

Precisely as it needed to be, to keep any harm from coming to the Plains outside.

Silverfox and Lo'isha watched anxiously; Firesong knew that the shaman would be able to see the energies they had raised, but the expression on Silverfox's face suggested that he, too, saw them, which meant that they were powerful enough even for non-mages to see. That meant he had been right; Urtho had built a mechanism of amplification into the design of the floor.

But there was no chance to gloat over this triumph of instinct and artistry over intellect and reason. It was time. He knew that, as if he were a water-clock and the last drop had just fallen.

"Karal, now!" he shouted, and Karal's face spasmed as his fingers closed convulsively on the trigger points of the device.

The center of the design exploded soundlessly into power. Karal was somewhere in the midst of all that—more power than any Heartstone, more power than Firesong had ever seen in his life, power that made Aya shriek and flee into the next room, that was so bright the shaman and Silverfox shouted and hid their eyes.

Somewhere in the heart of that inferno of energy, Karal struggled to hold it, to transmute it—he struggled—

And Firesong felt him failing. Not failing to hold, but failing in his grasp on the world, on himself, on his life. He was thinning, vanishing, evaporating in a little microcosm of his incandescent God. In a moment, he would be lost, and if anyone dared try to help him, the circle would break and they would all perish.

Over my dead body! Anger finally penetrated his drug-born and aloof indifference. Though—if instinct failed him, it might well be just that—

"Everybody! On my count, take human-sized steps forward, follow your compass point!" he shouted into the roaring silence. "One! Two! Three!"

The circle contracted around Karal, tightening in on him, and having the effect of focusing the energy he controlled as the rays' edges flanged and flared.

"Four! Five! Six!" They were all within touching range now, if they had all had hands. But that was not yet what Firesong's instincts cried out for.

"Seven! Eight!" They were practically on top of Karal now—the pyramid was gone, completely, and Karal was as transparent as one of the Avatars, his head thrown back, his mouth open in a silent cry, surrounded and encased in a pillar of white-hot, ice-cold fire.

"Nine!" He reached out and seized one of Karal's arms—without prompting, each of the others did the same, except for Florian, who touched the young man's breast with his nose, and Altra, who reared up on hind legs and placed both paws in the middle of his back.

The light!

It flared up in his face the moment they all touched Karal, he closed his eyes, but it scorched through his eyelids and flung him physically back! He felt his hand discorporate, turning into vapor—he lost his grip on Karal's arm, and felt himself tossed backward through the air, to land against the wall and slide bonelessly and helplessly to the floor.

It was over.

He couldn't see; couldn't hear.

They had won—but they had lost Karal.

Firesong fell back into darkness as profound as the explosion of light, and all feeble remaining awareness left him.

Firesong wasn't unconscious for very long, but it was certainly the first time in his life that he had been knocked out by magic—and the searing pain in his head told him just what price he had paid for tampering with such powers. He wouldn't be able to light a candle for the next week until he healed—and the next day or so was going to be pure hell. But with a shiver of glee, he realized he was alive.

He couldn't move for a moment; couldn't even think past the pain except for that tangle of elation and grief. We did it—I shouldn't have done that, he might have been all right if I hadn't told everyone to close in, it's my fault—

And—oh, gods, but who else had they lost? He forced himself to roll over and sit up, forced his eyes to open, but they were watering so heavily he couldn't see. He wiped at them frantically with his sleeve, as Aya scuttled back into the room and settled against his side, crooning.

"What in the name of Kal'enel happened?" he heard the shaman croak.

But the voice that answered was not Silverfox—nor anyone else who had been in the circle.

"I haven't a clue," Karal said, in a weak whisper. "I don't remember anything but pressing those ten trigger points."

Firesong managed to get his eyes clear, and to his utter astonishment, they confirmed what his ears had told him.

Lo'isha and Silverfox were bent over Karal, helping him to sit up. There didn't seem to be much of him inside those black robes of his—he looked as if he'd been undergoing a thirty-day Vision-Quest fast. Both of the others were handling him gingerly, as if they felt he was fragile glass.

Well, Firesong wasn't feeling any too sturdy himself at the moment....

But before he got a chance to build up even the faintest feeling of resentment, help arrived, pouring in through the tiny doorway, in the form of black-clad Shin'a'in Sword-Sworn who quickly and efficiently gathered them all up and carried them bodily out through the tunnel and up into the scarlet light of the setting sun. He let his body stay limp, simply cargo.

The sunset was a crimson light enhanced a bit with a coruscating rainbow of mage-energy, covering the bowl of the sky, slowly fading as the day itself faded.

He let himself be ministered to, as Aya oversaw everything and scolded if they jostled him too much as they carried him, with the rest, into a warm tent. He was too weak to resist, anyway. It was all he could do to nod when they asked him if he wanted something to drink, and to accept the bowl of hot herbal tea—well dosed with painkillers that he recognized at the first sniff. Those would war unpleasantly in his stomach for a few moments with the energy boosters, but he knew which ones would win, and he was grateful. He drank the bitter bowl down to the dregs, and waited stoically for the roiling in his gut to cease. He gathered from the chattering that the area around the Tower had suddenly lit up like a tiny sun for a moment, though absolutely no physical effect other than the light had leaked over into the "real" world. Firesong had the feeling that not even that would have occurred if they had not interfered and kept Karal from evaporating....

And if I had not—An'desha might have forgiven me eventually, but I would never have forgiven myself.

Not all of the effects of their counter storm had been so benign, however. In ruins all around the rim of the Plains, the gryphon scouts were reporting odd collapses, disappearances of structures and parts of structures; nothing modern, but only those things dating from Urtho's time.

Including the Gate they had arrived through.

As he faded into drugged sleep, he heard Treyvan sigh, and Hydona make the observation that he was already thinking.

"Well," she said with resignation. "We shall surrrely take ourrr time getting back—but therrre will be a home to rrreturrrn to."

The End