Storm breaking Read online

  "Mage-power, as we know and understand it, is an energy that is given off by living things in the same way that fire gives off heat and light in the act of consuming wood," he said, his manner easy and casual, his tone exactly the same as if he were describing the weather and not a power that could wreck kingdoms. "It tends to want to gather together, and tends to follow well-worn paths. In that, it is more like rainwater than fire."

  "And mages can see this power?" Karal asked, though his mouth was dry with nervousness.

  "That's what makes someone a mage," Sejanes replied. "I can see that power any time I make the effort to—and someone like Firesong has to make an effort not to see it."

  Karal glanced over at Firesong, who looked no different from any other absurdly handsome Hawkbrother, and shook his head. Seeing power all the time... was it like seeing things with an extra color added? Was it like seeing particles and waves swirling all around you like swimming underwater? And when the power got too strong, did it blind you, like looking into the sun?

  "Now, the power itself obeys rules," Sejanes continued. "When the threadlike paths, or tiny streams, merge together enough to make them of a different magnitude of strength, we call them 'ley-lines.' These tend to be straight, at least in the short term, and that, besides strength of power, is what makes ley-lines different from the trickles that feed them."

  "Is it the strength that makes them straight?" Karal hazarded.

  Sejanes looked pleased. "We don't know for certain, but that is the theory," he said. "It makes sense; a trickle of water will meander more than a powerful river. We think that after a certain point, the power can cut through the world taking the shortest distance which, as Master Levy will tell you, is always a straight line."

  Karal nodded; no wonder Sejanes and Master Levy got on so well!

  "Now, sooner or later, since power is attracted by power, these lines will meet. The places where two or more ley-lines meet forms something called a 'node,' where power collects." Sejanes looked at him expectantly.

  Karal hazarded another question. "It can't collect indefinitely, though, can it?"

  Sejanes looked very pleased. "No, it can't, and it will either be used up or drain away into the Void, and we honestly don't know what happens to it after that."

  Karal seemed to recall An'desha telling him something about a third option, something that the Hawkbrothers used called a Heartstone, but that was a complication he didn't need right now. First, learn the rules, and worry about the exceptions later.

  "Now—about using power," Sejanes continued. "Mages can use the power that they themselves produce. Mages can use the power given off by things in their immediate vicinity. Mages can also store power for later use in reservoirs; those can be available only to a single mage, or can be a group effort, built by group contributions, for as long as the group lasts."

  "Everybody?" Karal asked, more than a bit alarmed by the notion of a barely-trained Apprentice being able to use such power.

  "Oh, no!" Sejanes chuckled. "No, fortunately, lack of training and practice provides some control. The common titles for levels of ability refer to what power they can tap, and not their absolute skill. As with any venture, some people are more skilled than others, but I digress. Apprentices can only use their own power or what is immediately available around them below the level of a ley-line. Journeymen can use ley-lines. Masters can use those reservoirs. If a mage is part of a particular school, he is given the key to the reservoir built by the mages of that school at the time he becomes a Master. At that point, part of his duty every day is to feed the reservoir as much power as he has time to gather. Eventually, over the years, with these reservoirs being filled more often than they are drained, they are ready for anything the Masters might need, but that power is tame, like water in a still pond."

  "Because it isn't flowing anywhere?" Karal asked, and was rewarded by Sejanes's nod. "But what about nodes?"

  "That," Sejanes said with a shading of pride, "is what only Adepts can do. Adepts don't need to bother with the reservoirs, though they sometimes do simply because they are so still—for very delicate work, for example, such as Healings. Adepts can tap into and use the raw power of the nodes. The stronger the Adept, the larger the node he can control. Ley-line power is harder to control than reservoir power or ambient power, because, as you guessed, it is 'moving,' so to speak. But node power fights the user, because it is moving swiftly, sometimes in more than one direction and is wild and unconfined. Have you understood me so far?"

  Karal nodded; so far this all seemed very straightforward. Perhaps Altra would also be able to help him with this, since the Firecat seemed something of a mage.

  "Last of all of those who handle mage-power come the Channels." Sejanes nodded at Karal. "As I said when I began, the one thing that all life-path mages have in common is that they have what the Valdemarans call the Mage-Gift, and that ability enables them to actually see magic power. Channels, however, usually do not have Mage-Gift, or if they do, it isn't very strong."

  "Why?" Karal asked.

  Sejanes rubbed the side of his nose. "I don't know if there is a reason. There is some speculation that this is partly a protection for them, and partly a protection against them. The ability to sense magic power might be blinded the first time a Channel was used by very powerful magic. And if you can sense something, you can use it, so it might be better for all of us that anyone who can handle power stronger than any Adept would even dream of touching cannot actually use that power himself."

  Again, Karal nodded. If you went on the basic assumption that any Karsite would—which was that it was Vkandis who granted such abilities—such a system of checks and balances made complete sense. Vkandis would not have placed extraordinary power within the capacity of mere mortals without some curbs on the system.

  The explanation might also simply be that the act of attempting to actually use that much power rather than just direct it could be fatal. If mages who were also Channels died before they could wed and bring forth children with the Gift, such a combination wouldn't last for long. Look what happened to those with mind-magic in Karse. They'd been gathered up and given to the Fires for generations, and as a result, just before Solaris took power, there were so few such "witches" and "demons" that there hadn't been more than four or five Fires a year, with a single victim apiece.

  Sejanes looked down at his hands for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "Think of a funnel; the wide end catches scattered drops of water or small pieces of matter, and focuses it down into a small, directed stream. That's what a Channel does, and roughly how a Channel does it. And because a Channel actually forces the power going through him to flow through a 'smaller space,' he increases the force of that flow and its 'speed," if you will. So what a Channel needs to work perfectly is someone to guide the power in, however wild it may be, and someone to direct it as it goes out again. Remember that directing something—much like shunting a stream a few degrees—is much easier than using it."

  Karal nodded numbly as Sejanes continued.

  "Magic is much like water, Karal, but it is far more versatile. It can be manipulated by force of will, by natural aptitude, by specialized devices, and by other ways. Water, essentially, can only get things 'wet,' if I may use a crude analogy. Magic, however, can get things wet, turn things to dust, set them ablaze, make them into stone, give them life, put them somewhere else, and so on. But magic in its wild forms works in very gradual and subtle ways. It is not until magic is manipulated by someone that it has 'quick' effects. Without mages, magic takes its natural course."

  "Like a river," Karal offered. "And mages make water wheels and dams and bridges."

  Sejanes leaned back, apparently impressed. "That," he said slowly, "is essentially it. Yes. That is what we do."

  Karal bit at his lower lip and offered, "And what happened here, is that long ago there was an explosion in the magic that—scooped a hole out. And the water—I mean, the magic—is rushing back to fill the
hole."

  "Close," Sejanes nodded. "Very close. You are a bright young man, Karal. Now, back to just what you are. A Channel. For whatever reason, a Channel collects power that is brought 'to' him, and directs it in a more purely directed, less stormy fashion."

  "That's all there is to it?" Karal exclaimed. "I am a funnel?"

  Sejanes smiled. "That's all the theory," he chided gently. "But now comes the practice that will help you keep parts of yourself from interfering with or even fighting that stream of power. And it will be all the harder because you will be dealing with something you yourself can only sense dimly, like playing blind-man's bluff with an unruly stallion. And to continue that analogy, I'm not going to show you how to catch and ride the beast, because it will kill you if you try. Instead, I'm going to try to teach you how to keep 'yourself' out of its way."

  At the end of the lesson, Karal was quite certain that Sejanes' analogy of a game with an angry horse was the correct one. The inside of his head felt bruised, somehow, though certainly not as bad as he had felt after the first time he'd acted as a Channel. The lesson was over when Sejanes clapped him on the back and told him that he had done very well for his first attempt.

  "You aren't the worst Channel I've ever seen, and we tend to use them more than you Westerners do," the old mage said cheerfully. "I don't know if the ability occurs more often in the Empire or if we Imperial mages are so lazy that we'd rather use Channels than focus power ourselves, and so we make an active effort to look for the ability. But you aren't the worst, that's for certain, and you've come to the lessons late in your life, so that's encouraging."

  :Faint praise, but better than none, I suppose,: Altra observed, wrapping himself around Karal's legs. :Natoli is waiting to talk to you.:

  "I'm going to assume that since my lord Altra is here, that your young lady is ready to speak to you," Sejanes observed. "Go on, off with you. By the by, you'll toughen up as you practice; this should be the worst training session you'll ever endure."

  :You'll notice he said training session,: Altra observed, as Karal got up from his stool and followed the Firecat. :That doesn't say anything about the real thing.:

  That hadn't escaped Karal's attention, but he really didn't want to dwell on it, not when he was finally going to get to see and talk to Natoli.

  Karal took his place on the empty stool in front of the teleson; Altra draped himself over Karal's feet, and the Herald in the crystal winked, and stepped away. A moment later, Natoli moved into the place he had vacated.

  She looked as if she had recovered from the boiler explosion. Her hair was a little longer than it had been when he left, and she looked at him as if she had forgotten why she was there. Suddenly he felt very shy.

  "Hello, Natoli," he said awkwardly. "You look in good health."

  He winced as he listened to himself; was that any way to speak to a girl he really wanted to be able to kiss?

  "You don't," she said bluntly, peering at him. "You're too pale, and too thin. What have you been doing to yourself?"

  That was so very typical of her that he had to laugh, and relaxed immediately. "As to the first, we've been living underground, and we mostly don't get to see the sun. And as to the second—have you ever tasted Firesong's cooking?" He shuddered melodramatically, and she laughed in return. "Seriously. We're mostly eating as the Shin'a'in do; it's not that bad, just a little odd."

  "And you don't often see a fat Shin'a'in," she said shrewdly. "Things were quiet until Altra showed up with this contraption. We Artificers all wanted to take it apart, of course, but when we were told that the first person to try would be skinned, we gave up on the idea." She grinned. "We'll have to make do with trying to duplicate it from those manuscripts. If we can, we'll send one by fast Herald-courier to Solaris, and then you'll get to talk to her on a regular basis."

  "Must I?" he asked weakly. He was not ready to face Solaris just yet. He wasn't sure he would be for quite a while, actually. Her Radiance was not a comfortable person to speak to, face-to-face. For that matter, she wasn't a comfortable person to communicate with, letter to letter; he always had the feeling that he was reading something intended for an audience rather than a personal letter.

  "First we have to duplicate it," she pointed out, and smiled. "You know, I'm very glad to see you again. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I'd wake up, and I'd wonder if you were—quite real."

  Oddly enough, he knew exactly what she meant. "It's hard to imagine someone being real who's that far away," he agreed. "It's as if they never existed except in your mind."

  She flushed a little, and looked away for a moment. "Anyway," she continued awkwardly, "we've been busy, though it doesn't have anything to do with the important things." She sounded wistful. "There's just nothing we can do right now to help with what you're doing, so we're back to the old projects like bridges and steam boilers."

  "There's nothing wrong with that," he countered. "Don't these things have to be done no matter what disaster might be looming?" He managed a crooked grin. "If everything else falls apart, your bridges will be there to get people across rivers that can't be ferried or forded. Surely that's worth something."

  She shrugged but looked pleased. "At least what we're doing is useful," she admitted. "It's odd, though. The folk around and about Haven have the funniest attitude; you can tell them and tell them that the protection we've given them from the mage-storms is only temporary, but they act as if it's permanent. They aren't doing anything to prepare themselves for the worst, they aren't even thinking about it." Now she sounded and looked very frustrated. "When you ask them why, they just shrug and can't give you an answer, or they say something stupid, fatalistic, or both."

  "I think," he said slowly, "that ordinary folk just can't imagine anything awful happening to them. It always happens to someone else."

  "Well, you'd think after years of war and bandits and all they should know better," she replied acidly. "At any rate, now that things have settled down, they aren't at all interested in asking us about things they can do when the Storms come again, they just want to know how long it is going to take before a bridge will be up. Or if the steam boiler is likely to explode again."

  "I hope you're on bridges," he said, trying not to show alarm. "And not steam boilers."

  "Actually, I'm on metal stress," she replied, running her hand through her hair absently. "I get to make some very interesting and loud noises. We're trying to make tougher alloys, but I don't want to bore you with what we're doing. I spend some time in the forge, because at the moment, work on steam boilers is stalled until we can find a better way to make the boiler itself."

  He sighed, resting his chin on his hands. "It wouldn't bore me, but I'd be lost," he admitted. "Sejanes is trying to teach me some specific kind of exercises for working with magic, and those would probably mean about as much to you."

  "Probably." The conversation died for a moment. "Still, I hope you aren't—I mean, I don't want you to think that—" her face twisted with frustration. "Just, if you're doing something dangerous, don't take more on yourself than you can carry all right?"

  He smiled. "As long as you promise to do the same," he replied, and she laughed.

  "Grain for the gander is good for the goose, hmm? Well, I'll promise to try but my judgment is sometimes faulty."

  "So is mine, so don't hold it against me." His smile took on an ironic edge. "We can't all be infallible Sons of the Sun."

  "Oh, even Solaris admits to fallibility," she chuckled. "Believe it or not."

  "Solaris?" he chuckled. "That would be an entry in the annals, especially if she admitted that she was fallible to you polytheistic barbarians."

  "But she did!" Natoli protested, and as he continued to regard her askance, she looked surprised. "Oh! I'll bet no one told you, any of you! You will not believe what has happened with Grand Duke Tremane!"

  As she outlined the astonishing developments in Hardorn since the arrival of Elspeth and Darkwind, Karal felt his eyes
growing larger and larger. No one had seemed to think that any of this was significant enough to pass on to any of the other members of his party—

  Which is probably because they all have their own preoccupations and not a one of them thinks anything is important outside those preoccupations! But you'd think someone would have said something to Sejanes!

  "We have a Herald and a Companion stationed down in Karse in Solaris'—court, I suppose you call it—" she added.

  "Conclave," he corrected.

  "Conclave, then. We sent him down so that we could get information to her by way of his Companion and Talia's Rolan." She laughed. "Actually, it's not just a 'Herald,' it's my father, and he seems to be enjoying himself. Anyway, we sent her word about this, and the reply she sent back was: 'Since he has voluntarily placed himself in the hands of a higher judge of character than myself, I feel impelled to point out that Natoli, An'desha, and Karal were correct in their assessment of his basic character, and I was at least in part swayed by nothing more substantial than emotion.' What do you think of that?" She grinned, as if she had somehow won a great prize. Then again, winning a concession like that from Solaris would have been a great prize, particularly as it was her father who had sent the message on to Haven.

  It's a small thing, but she just proved to her father that she doesn't have to be a Herald to accomplish something important, he realized. And maybe she just proved it to herself as well.

  "I think she didn't use the ecclesiastic plural, which means that she was speaking for Solaris and not for the Son of the Sun," he told her, but he felt very pleased, nevertheless, for the sake of his own people. Historically, it was a tremendous temptation for the Son of the Sun to always think of himself as speaking for Vkandis, until even the most minor personal opinions were incorporated as doctrine. Solaris appeared to have overcome that particular temptation. "Which is not a bad thing."