Storm Warning Page 23

  "The Shin'a'in and the Tayledras have agreed to establish safeholds in the west, in this line," she said, pointing out a line that began at the southern rim of Lake Evendim and continued down to the Dhorisha Plains. "We will hold a safe path of retreat at all times, just as we did during the war with Ancar. We can also receive some of your Hardornen refugees that are willing to take a chance on making new homes in the west, and we hope that this will take some of the strain from the resources of Valdemar."

  She sat down again, and Firesong took up where she had left off. "I must admit to you all, however, that as reinforcements, both of our peoples are fairly useless. We are equipped to wage very small-scale battles at the best. The Shin'a'in excel as individual warriors, but they have no organization or structure above the Clan hunting party. The Tayledras have better organization among our scouts, but again, we field very small units. We can offer a place of retreat, we can offer some support, but as armies go—" his expression was rueful, "—we can't manage much that is going to be useful to you."

  "What about mages?" The Guild representative called.

  "Ah, mages." Firesong nodded. "First of all, the Shin'a'in do not have mages. However, the Kaled'a'in—that is an offshoot tribe of both our peoples—do practice magic, and the Star-Eyed has given them leave to use it up here, am I correct?" He glanced back at the gryphon called Treyvan, who chuckled.

  "Betterrr sssay that Ssshe hasss given them theirrr marrrching ordersss," the gryphon said, with a glance over at the fellow who had expressed scorn over Vkandis' implied power. "Asss sssomeone elssse herrre pointed out, theme arrre sssome of usss who arrre usssed to hearrring dirrrectly from ourrr godsss."

  "So, that's one group—and I have to admit that even I am not certain what these magic-users can and cannot do. They have been separated from us for a very long time, and casually use things that we had long considered lost arts. We, the Tayledras, are also prepared to strip the Vales of mages and bring them here. We will not endanger our Vales, but there are many projects that can wait a little longer while we aid you."

  "White Winds, Blue Mountain, and any other school we can contact will be doing the same," the White Winds representative put in. Quenten, I think. A friend of Kerowyn. Karal noted that they appeared to be about the same age. "If the Empire moves this far west, we freelance mages cannot afford to stand by idly. The Empire will annex us, or destroy us. That has been their policy in the past, and it is what they are doing now in Hardorn."

  Firesong nodded. "I did say that there is no way that we can even begin to equal the sheer number of mages that the Empire can bring to bear—and I still mean that. However, the fact that the Empire works in a different tradition from us can work against them as well. If we don't know what they can do, the reverse is true for them. Right now, absolutely the best thing we can concentrate on is to learn everything we can about the Empire and its mages."

  "True, and we're working on that," Kerowyn replied, "but don't forget they'll be doing the same thing about us."

  Karal was taking notes furiously, while fighting his wish to gawk at the rest of the table. Firesong was as flamboyant as the last time Karal had seen him, though this time his color of choice was scarlet with touches of bright blue; the Shin'a'in envoy was sleekly exotic, as quiet and deadly as one of her arrows.

  Then there were the gryphons. Once again, hearing an intelligible, intelligent sentence emerge from those beaks gave him something of a start. If he had not seen the Firecat Hansa conferring with Solaris with his own eyes, he would have been even more startled—and inclined to suspect trickery, some kind of magic to make it look as if the "beast" was speaking.

  Ulrich stood up, and all eyes went to him. "I am inclined to agree with the Herald Captain in principle," he said, carefully, "But there is another factor involved here. The Empire is enormous, very old, and has probably never met with serious opposition in a very long time. They are likely to be used to these favorable conditions. They may very well dismiss all of us as 'barbarians' and inconsequential. They may not pursue their own intelligence-gathering operations as vigorously as they should. We cannot count on this, of course—" he added, as Kerowyn looked ready to protest such hubris, "—but we should be watching for patterns that indicate this. In fact, I believe that we should pursue the notion of planting information that we are as disorganized on this side of the border as the poor Hardornens are, and as paralyzed with terror. If we see the attitude of complacence developing, we will then be poised to take instant advantage of it."

  Kerowyn smiled broadly at that, and bowed a little in acknowledgment of Ulrich's cleverness. He returned the ironic little salute as he regained his seat.

  "What about the mages of Valdemar?" Prince Daren asked into the silence.

  Now it was Elspeth's turn, and she rose to her feet. "The obvious answer is that we should train as many, and as quickly, as we can—which we are doing. The second obvious answer is that we should also recruit as many freelance mages from the south as possible, just as we did during the last conflict with Ancar. The problem with that second obvious answer is that other than mages from the Kaled'a'in and Tayledras, and those coming from schools and teachers personally known to Quenten, we have to suspect that at least some of the mages we might recruit from the south are agents of the Empire. Most of the mages that Quenten knows and can vouch for are already up here. That leaves us with the first answer. We're training our own—but there are only so many of them."

  "Whoa, wait a moment," Kerowyn interrupted, a look of concentration on her face. "I just thought of something. Why make so hard a push for mages at all?"

  "But—!" someone cried, triggering a storm of protest from around the table; she waved the protests away.

  "No, I'm serious. What put the idea in everyone's head that mages were the answer to everything?" she asked.

  Well that certainly put a fox among the hens. Stunned silence reigned for a moment, until Kerowyn broke it.

  "Yes, we needed them desperately when we were fighting Ancar, but that was because without them there were things he could field that we simply couldn't fight. But that's not the case now." More protests erupted; she waved for further silence. "Wait, hear me out!"

  The Queen herself ordered silence when it was obvious Kerowyn was not going to command it herself. From the looks of suppressed panic around the table, unless Kerowyn made her point very well, the silence was not going to last very long.

  "Look," Kerowyn said earnestly, leaning over the table to emphasize her point. "The things that the Empire is simply not prepared for are the factors that make Karse and Valdemar absolutely unique in their experience. In Karse—it's something we aren't even prepared for, the fact that Vkandis Sunlord can, will, and does intervene with and guide His people directly. For all I know, if the Empire penetrates the borders of Karse, He might even decide to lob a few firebolts at some select Imperial generals!"

  "It would take more than simply penetrating our border to cause Him to do so," Ulrich murmured gently, as she looked at him with expectation, "but it is possible He could choose to intervene selectively."

  "Yes, well, miracles do happen with predictable regularity in Karse," she retorted.

  Ulrich simply smiled very, very slightly.

  "That's going to make it difficult, if not impossible, for the Empire to attack successfully in that direction. And meanwhile, I'll bet your Sunlord is doing something else the Empire isn't prepared for. I'll bet He's feeding Solaris with better information than any of my agents can get," Kerowyn stated baldly, then smiled at Ulrich's cautious nod. "Well, I've got some good news for you and your people. As far as my spies have been able to determine, the people of the Empire have a state religion that venerates the current Emperor, his predecessors, and all his ancestors. I'm sure that's very nice for Charliss, but I've got no evidence that he has any special power that an Adept couldn't duplicate, which means that the Sunlord isn't going to be squaring off against another deity if He does decide to throw f
irebolts around."

  Karal scribbled all this down furiously.

  "Ah," Ulrich said, brightening. "That does put the likelihood of intervention, at least within the Karsite borders, much higher."

  "Thought so," Kerowyn said, with an even bigger smile. "All right, then. In Valdemar, one thing that the Empire is not prepared for is the simple existence of the Heralds and Companions. We have brought mind-magic to a high art here; I don't think there's another place north of Ceejay that has people using mind-magic so—scientifically. For that matter, I don't know that there's anyone using it this way south of Ceejay either."

  Quenten shrugged. "Not that I've ever heard of."

  Kerowyn nodded. "That's what I thought. We had to do without magic from the time of Vanyel; we found ways to deal with problems that didn't require magic. They put a tremendous emphasis on magic—you all heard the report, they do things with magic we wouldn't dream of, but that makes them very vulnerable if they expect us to do the same and plan their magical attacks accordingly."

  Firesong nodded vigorously, Ulrich cautiously; Elspeth simply looked thoughtful. "That sounds good for a working premise," Elspeth said at last.

  "So, this time we have one thing that we didn't have when we were fighting off Ancar—we have time, while they're busy eating Hardorn a gulp at a time." Kerowyn shrugged. "I know it sounds cold-hearted, but just at the moment I can't recommend helping the Hardornens directly. My recommendation is that we study the Empire, we make diplomatic overtures to them to buy time, and we find out how we can counter their magic without using magic of our own—or with using mind-magic instead. We use what we can apply with confidence to the absolute limit, because they simply will not be expecting that."

  More nods around the table, as Karal caught up with everything that had been said so far. He was very glad now for all those lessons from Alberich; without them, he'd have been lost long before this.

  Prince Daren spoke up next.

  "The Empire waited decades—maybe longer—before they moved on Hardorn," he pointed out. "They actually attacked only when they could do so with an absolute minimum of resistance. We know they had an agent at the highest levels to feed them accurate intelligence—we should assume that they have had agents there all along. If we convince them that it would be too expensive to take us, they may decide not to."

  "We can hope for that," Selenay said. "We can work toward convincing them of that. But we cannot risk assuming that."

  "Agreed," rumbled the Lord Marshal.

  There was more discussion, a few more pertinent comments and additions, but on the whole the real work of the meeting was over at that point. When people had begun repeating what had already been stated, Selenay called a halt to it all, and declared the meeting closed.

  It was not too soon for Karal; his fingers were beginning to cramp.

  And none of this had driven An'desha and An'desha's plight out of his mind. He could not wait to get Ulrich alone, and see what his mentor had to offer.

  "You're very quiet tonight," Firesong observed, as An'desha stared at lamplight reflected in the waterfall. "Are you well?"

  "Just tired," An'desha replied truthfully. "I did some work in the garden, and then repeated all the mage-exercises you showed me until my control felt uncertain; then I quit."

  Firesong looked pleased, and An'desha relaxed. He had made the conscious decision to keep this new friendship with the Karsite a secret from Firesong for at least a little while. That was partly because he was not certain how Firesong would react to such a revelation. Granted, Firesong had been encouraging him to be more sociable, but An'desha was not altogether sure what he would do if he learned that An'desha had made a, singular, friend. Especially when he found that friend was male.

  It had occurred to him that under those circumstances, Firesong was very likely to come to the erroneous conclusion that his friendship with Karal was based on physical attraction, not mental attraction, and that it might go beyond mere "friendship" before too long.

  No, it would be a good thing to keep his meetings with Karal between the two of them—unless Karal brought his master, Lord Priest Ulrich, along. Then it should be safe enough to reveal.

  The oddest thing is, he'd never make the same assumption if my friend was female, and it would be far more likely that I'd—ah—get involved with a female than with another man.

  "Any more of those premonitions of doom?" Firesong asked, a little teasingly. "They might be useful, actually; it seems that the mages in the Empire—"

  Premonitions of doom—

  An'desha gasped, as the ground seemed to drop out from underneath him, and Firesong's voice faded into a roar that filled his ears. He clutched at the rock he was sitting on, but his fingers didn't work. Darkness assaulted him—then blinding light. Then darkness again, filled with the twisting snakes of red An'desha always saw after a bright light. He tried to scream and couldn't. He couldn't even feel his jaws opening.

  Then light, striking him in concentric circles. It was almost as if something had picked him up and was shaking him, waving him as a maiden might wave a scarf in the Rain-bird Dance. And everywhere, everywhere, was terrible fear, filling him with icy paralysis. Then the darkness again, and then less light than before, then darkness.

  Then it was over, as swiftly and without warning as it had begun. He found himself falling backward, still on his stone, Firesong clutching his shoulders and staring into his eyes, while his hands held to the rock underneath him, spasmed into rigidity.

  "What—?" he choked out.

  "You were in a trance," Firesong said, testing An'desha's forehead with the back of his hand for fever. "You cried out once, and grabbed for the stone—I saw how your eyes looked, and sensed power about you, and knew you were in a trance. You looked terrified."

  "I was. Am." An'desha gulped. "It was terrible, horrible, yet there was nothing that I can describe. Light and dark in waves, disorientation."

  Firesong looked into his eyes, and frowned. "It happened when I asked if you were still troubled by premonitions. This seems too well-timed a response to be simple coincidence."

  Numbly, An'desha nodded. If anything, his sense of dread, his tension, had increased now.

  "Listen, and I will tell you what was related at the Council," Firesong said at last. "Mornelithe Falconsbane was not given to prescience—but you are not he, and there is no reason why you should not have that Gift. For that matter, She might well have granted it to you—as we were reminded at the Council, there are more hands than the merely human working in this stewpot now."

  I wouldn't be too sure that I am not Falconsbane, An'desha thought bleakly, but he listened quietly while Firesong recited what had transpired at the meeting.

  "Did anything I spoke of wake a resonance with you?" he asked, when he was done. An'desha had to shake his head.

  "Nothing," he said sadly. "You might as well have been telling me facts concerning cattle or sheep. It meant nothing."

  Firesong tugged at a lock of silver hair, frowning. "I am at a loss," he said finally. "It would seem to me that our great enemy is at hand—that the Empire and all the Empire's mages should be the source of your fears, and yet—"

  "It is not the Empire, peacock!" An'desha retorted, losing his temper. "I have been trying to tell you that! It is something else, something we have not even dreamed of! And I think—" he gulped and felt his skin turn cold and clammy as he voiced what he feared he must do, "—I think there is some key to it among the memories that the Great Beast left with me."

  Firesong winced, but a moment later placed one hand comfortingly over An'desha's clenched fist. "Then we must examine those memories," he replied, with more gentleness than An'desha would ever have credited him with. "You and I. I have been remiss in forcing you to walk those paths alone, An'desha. I had been so certain that I knew what the answer to your fears was." An'desha stared at him, startled at this new and unwonted humility. "I do not know. Captain Kerowyn made it very clear to me
in ways I could not ignore after the Council meeting that these Imperial mages were so very different from anything I have ever experienced that it was wildly unlikely I would be able to counter anything they brought to bear on us effectively." Then a ghost of his old self came back for a moment. "Or at least, it would be unlikely the first time they unleashed something upon us. I daresay once I had seen it, I could deal with it."

  Then even that bit of arrogance faded. "Still, they need only keep changing their weaponry—and the Captain pointed out that what I cannot anticipate, I cannot personally guard against, either." His own face grew paler as he looked solemnly into An'desha's eyes. "For the first time in my life, I cannot be sure that I can guard myself from harm. That is—very unsettling. Even when wrestling the power of a renegade Heartstone I did not have such a sense of mortality as I do now. It makes me unsure."

  Oh, most lovely. Now what?

  "But if that is true, then it is also true that things I had assumed—things regarding you—might also be incorrect." He sighed. "So, now, at long last, I am listening to you. And I am asking you; what do you think we, together, should do?"

  Run away! his cowardly inner self said. But he swallowed, took a steadying breath, and said, a bit shakily, "You must help me with those memories of lives that Falconsbane had before he took my body. We must go farther than I have dared to."

  If only the Avatars would come again, he thought, stifling fear, as Firesong nodded his agreement. They knew what it is I am floundering about in search of—

  Or did they? In all their warnings, they had seemed to bear a sense of frustration that they could not explain themselves clearly. Perhaps even they did not know. They were very near to the flesh-and-blood bodies they had once worn, after all, and in fact, Tre'valen and Dawnfire were not technically "dead" at all as they had explained it to him. That was why they had been able to help him, so far from the Plains and the Hills, and out of the range of the Star-Eyed's influence.