The Councilor in question flushed a painful scarlet and mumbled an apology in Ulrich's direction. The Priest bowed slightly in acknowledgment and acceptance, and the Queen took the floor again.
"It is just as tempting for Valdemar to act during this period of confusion," Selenay said gravely. "We are overcrowded with Hardornen refugees, for one thing. It would be very convenient for us to send them back into their own land again, under Valdemaran supervision. Sending military advisors, perhaps?"
The Councilor for the East asked for the floor. "We have been encouraging them to go back to Hardorn and take back their own land again, but it's very difficult to convince them to do so when we can promise them no help. Ancar drained his land dry, and times would be very hard there without an army of occupation holding half the country. They simply cannot do anything against the Empire without substantial aid."
"But if we offer them aid, we open up another bag of troubles entirely," the Lord Marshal said instantly. "At the moment, Hardorn is still a buffer between us and the Empire, and the Emperor seems in no great hurry to take the rest of the country. If the Emperor decided that offering aid to Hardorn was a direct act of aggression, he could escalate his occupation in order to get at us. Frankly, he can move more troops and resources faster than we can respond. I don't advise any kind of intervention, no matter what words or titles we cloak it in." His mouth twitched in a grimace of chagrin. "I may be a military man, but I know my facts. Fact one—we don't have the resources to take on the Empire. Fact two—we can't afford to antagonize them. We have no choice."
"What is the Empire doing right now?" Prince Daren asked. In answer, Selenay gestured to Kerowyn, who stood up with a sheaf of papers in her hand.
"I have an intelligence report on precisely that right here," Kerowyn said, her voice carrying easily to all parts of the room. "In essence, they've stopped moving forward. My agents say that there is a new commander in charge of the entire operation, someone reporting directly to Emperor Charliss. This new commander seems to have decreed a halt to further conquest while he builds a supporting infrastructure behind his lines. How long that will take—I can't tell you. They have more resources than we do, and anybody with a lot of resources can do quite a bit very quickly, barring bad luck and acts of nature or gods."
"Granted." Prince Daren nodded. "Then what happens?"
"Once that is in place," Kerowyn continued, "chances are he will order another push forward, then halt to build, and repeat that pattern until he has the entire country. It's my opinion that he'll hold to that pattern as long as there is little or no organized resistance."
"What will he do when he reaches the Valdemar border and the Karsite border?" the Guild representative, Lady Cathal, asked in a tone of quiet tension.
Kerowyn shrugged. "Frankly, he's got a big enough army that if I were in his shoes, I wouldn't stop. I'd keep right on going as long as losses were acceptable. And don't ask me what 'acceptable losses' are for him; the entire population of all our peoples could be less than a regional garrison to them. I don't know what counts as 'acceptable,' because he hasn't yet met with any resistance that's given him any palpable losses at all. I haven't been able to see the conditions that make his commanders pull back. For Ancar, any losses were acceptable as long as he took ground. For us—we're more inclined to retreat than lose lives. He could follow either pattern, but chances are he'll be somewhere in the middle. I can tell you this; 'acceptable losses' will be a percentage of his troops, rather than a hard number. One percent of his strength is a lot more in real numbers of men than one percent of ours."
"And our land is worn out from the conflict with Ancar," the Lord Marshal pointed out glumly. "We could mount some resistance, but how could it be enough to discourage an army like the Eastern Empire can field?"
"Karse is not in much better shape than Valdemar, although we took little direct damage," Ulrich added. "Indirectly—we did lose troops to Ancar, and mages that we sent up here to you."
"And speaking of mages," Kerowyn put in, taking over the floor again, "the Empire seems to have mages that do things differently than ours do. Many of you have heard Elspeth describe how the Imperial Ambassador to Hardorn created a Gate without any physical counterpart, and our mages have all reacted to that bit of news with dropped jaws. Maybe these mages are better than ours, and maybe they aren't. It hardly matters; they're different, and that's a problem. Vastly different approaches to mage-craft make it quite likely that they can hit us with something we would never expect in a hundred years."
"And there are," Firesong added smoothly, "many, many more mages in the Empire than the entire Alliance can currently supply. Again, that is a real fact. Herald Captain Kerowyn asked me to look at the section of her intelligence report that deals with magic. It is evident to me that much of Imperial infrastructure depends very heavily on mages. I would judge, from the descriptions in the report, that they use mages for communication, construction, and transportation, making their conventional supply-lines much different from what we would use. In layman's terms, I believe that all of their supplies come from deep within the Empire itself by means of Gates. If they can afford to use mages for tasks where we would use carts, workers, and messengers, what kind of offensive magics can they muster?"
"I'm not sure I want to think about it," someone muttered grimly, as shocked silence fell around the table.
Kerowyn is a good commander who does not shrink away from the truth, however unpleasant, Karal decided, and wrote exactly that down. She has a talent for stating baldly the things that no one else truly wants to consider.
Finally the Lord Patriarch cleared his throat, making no few of those sitting around the table start. "Well," he said, unsteadily, "What are our options, with such a force levied against us? It begins to look as if the only one we have is to pray!"
The Shin'a'in envoy looked at Firesong, and he nodded, deferring to her. She stood up, took a pointer from a page and went to the great map inlaid on the wall.
"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 firebolts 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—may
be 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.
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