"The floor will do, Most Holy," the gryphon said with careful courtesy, and settled himself there as Elspeth chose another chair. "I hope you will forgive me, but how is it that you did not know that Vykaendys was—"
"Was watching over both our lands? I suspect it is partly because that knowledge was lost while corrupt Priests held the Sun Throne. As to why Vkandis did not choose to reveal this fact to me until now—" She spread her hands wide. "The God moves in His own way, and in His own time. Presumably He had a reason for sending me here to be hit over the head with this revelation."
"I suspect that He sent you here for more than that reason, Most Holy," Tashiketh replied respectfully.
"If you are here, who is holding the Sun Throne?" Elspeth blurted, unable to restrain her curiosity. "I thought you couldn't leave for any length of time, that there were still those you did not entirely trust."
"Oh, that is a tale in itself, and some day I will tell you all of it, but in short, I am here because Vkandis Himself sits on the Sun Throne at this very moment," Solaris said. As Elspeth started with surprise, Solaris nodded. "I mean that quite literally. It is the second great Miracle of my reign; the great statue of Vkandis came to life again during a Holy Service over which I was presiding, then ordered us all to follow and walked out of the Temple, shrinking as He moved, until He reached the throne room, where He took the throne."
Solaris spoke so matter-of-factly that she might have been discussing the terrible blizzard outside, rather than something that was, quite clearly, a miracle in every sense of the word. Elspeth was as fascinated by her attitude as by what had happened. She saw no reason to doubt anything that Solaris told her, for Solaris would not have left Karse without a compelling reason and an unshakable guarantee that her Throne would be waiting for her when she returned.
"When He had seated Himself, He let it be known that I was traveling into Hardorn on a life-or-death mission at His behest, and that in token of the fact that I was His true-born Son, He would be holding the Sun Throne until I returned," she continued. "He swore His protection to Karse against the Storms. At that point, the statue became a statue again except, of course, it was literally rooted to the Sun Throne. It wasn't an illusion either; the great statue is quite gone from the pedestal, and the smaller version in place on the Throne. And in addition, there is a peculiar barrier around Karse itself. People can come and go through it, but it is quite visible, and it seems to resemble the barrier around Iftel that Karal described to me." She smiled a bit wryly. "Now it seems clear why it resembles that barrier. The Sunlord has had practice."
Solaris might seem to be matter-of-fact, but as Elspeth listened and watched, she realized that Solaris was profoundly moved and awed. Elspeth found this a great deal easier to understand; how could anyone not feel awe at such an occurrence?
"I doubt that anyone will have the temerity to claim your place, given that particular demonstration," Tashiketh said dryly. "'And so Vykaendys directed you here?"
"Precisely, and it was not the easiest journey I have ever undertaken, though not the worst either. Our robes earned us respect and safe passage, though no one really recognized us as Sun-priests." One corner of her mouth twitched. "I will admit it came as something of a shock to learn that Tremane had been Bound to Hardorn. That puts him on an equal basis with me, in some ways, and it was not what I would have expected to see happen. Still, it is probably good for Hardorn." She laughed softly. "I also have a confession that I might as well make to you both. I am taking a certain amount of sadistic pleasure in this. He is going to suffer physical discomfort, even terrible pain from time to time, he agreed to this, he even volunteered for it, and I think that between this and his geas of Truth-speaking, he just might be able to atone for his actions in the past."
"He spoke to me in private of what he had done, sending the assassin," Tashiketh admitted. "I believe he regrets his actions more with every passing day."
"Well, he should," Solaris said firmly. "I cannot even begin to describe the anguish he caused, not only to myself and Karal, but to those who knew and cared for all of his victims. But although I am not prepared to forgive him yet, I am willing and ready to work with him. I am an Adept of a peculiar bent, as I suspect you have guessed. I think we may be able yet to find ways to protect ourselves through this crisis."
"I hope so," Elspeth said fervently. "I hope so."
"With Vykaendys' help," Tashiketh replied with absolute certainty, "we shall."
Ten
Firecats had a real cat's ability to make a person feel as if she was a particularly stupid student and the cat was a teacher fast losing patience. :Vkandis' protection is temporary,: Hansa said firmly, looking for all the world precisely like the Cat statue at the feet of Henricht, the first Son of the Sun. Poor Henricht, even as a statue, looked singularly unprepossessing; the Cat, however, looked as if he should have been sitting on the Sun Throne. :It cannot last through the Final Storm. The nodes in Karse are as vulnerable as any. The protection is only meant to prevent people and beasts from Changing, and to prevent the greater part of the priesthood from falling ill twice and thrice a day.: He bent his head then, and washed a paw with great daintiness. :You and your priests will have to do your share like everyone else. If nodes go rogue, you will be dealing with the unfortunate results.:
Solaris sighed, but not with disappointment. Elspeth thought that her sigh sounded more like someone who had just heard unpleasant news she had nevertheless expected.
"Shields," Darkwind muttered, pacing, as Vree followed his movements with interest from his perch in the corner. "That has to be the key. But how do we create a shield that will hold through even the Storms we have now?"
Elspeth pummeled her mind for something she remembered out of—a Chronicle? No, it was a story that Kerowyn had told about one of the mages her grandmother had trained. "Why only one shield?" she asked. "Why not layered shields, shields within shields? Kerowyn told me about something like that; the mage layered lots of weaker shields instead of one strong one, and kept replacing them from the inside as they were taken down from the outside. If you could do that, keep replacing the innermost shield every time the outermost was destroyed—"
"Interesting, and yes, it has been done before, and quite successfully," Darkwind said, knitting his brows in thought. "Multiple shields are more effective than one strong shield. But we can't put a mage beside every node, and if we don't, how could we keep replacing shields as they came down? You can't shield from the outside once the initial shield is up, and how would we do it from the inside? That is the problem of course, and a spell—or series of spells—would have to be crafted for that."
"If we could. How would we continue to supply the energy to create the shields in the first place?" Tremane objected. Solaris gave him a withering look. "You would be sealing the perfect energy source within the shield," she replied, with an unspoken "fool" hanging off the end of the sentence. "that would be the least of our problems. And if the energy were to be exhausted and all the shields fail, well, an exhausted node would be no more dangerous than no node. If there's no power to act upon, there will be nothing to go rogue."
"Apologies, but things work somewhat differently where I am from, and we did not handle magic wells that way," Tremane offered. Tremane did not take offense at her manner, perhaps because she was at least participating in these experimental sessions and demonstrating that she was not going to take out her animosity toward him on Hardorn and its people in general. He grimaced as if he was getting a headache. "Then if we could simply find a way to keep a node spawning its own shields until the energy ran out—"
"This is all very nice in theory," Elspeth pointed out impatiently. "But even if we could do that, we haven't the time or the resources to run about the countryside slapping a shieldspell over every node!"
"Well, actually, we wouldn't have to do that, at least not here—" began Tremane.
"There are Priests enough in Karse to shield every node there," sai
d Solaris at the same time.
"And that works for Hardorn and Karse." Elspeth frowned. "But what about Valdemar? And the Pelagirs? And elsewhere?"
"Hmm," Tashiketh rumbled, moving his gaze from Solaris to Tremane and back again. "There is an answer to that question already in our hands."
Hansa and Father Janas switched their gazes between the two rulers also, as Solaris and Tremane exchanged a very peculiar look.
There was something rather odd going on there, and Elspeth hadn't a clue to what it was all about, but the tension between those two suddenly increased a hundredfold.
"I do not like you," Solaris burst out, as she abruptly got to her feet and stood, glaring at Tremane. "I do not like you at all! Ever since you and your heathen army came here, you have stood for everything I find detestable—expediency above honor, craft above wisdom, guile above truth, self-reliance above faith! I do not like you!"
And with that, she gathered her robes about her and swirled out, Hansa padding in her wake. The heavy silence that followed her outburst made even their breathing seem loud.
"What in hell was that all about?" Elspeth asked, bewildered. She had never seen Solaris lose control like that before.
Tremane looked at the door that Solaris had closed—not slammed—behind herself. "I'm not sure," he replied, "but it might have to do with a solution that involves a personal compromise on the part of the Son of the Sun." He appeared to make up his mind about something and stood up. "If you four can work on the problem of a self-renewing shield-spell that can take power from a node-source without the intervention of an Adept, I will go and speak with Solaris, and see if my guess mirrors actuality rather than just an outburst of frustration."
He nodded at all of them, and left as well.
Darkwind snorted. "A self-renewing shield-spell that takes power from a node without an Adept. At least he was only asking the impossible!"
But Elspeth wasn't so certain. "Don't Tayledras Heartstones do self-renewing spells, like the Veil? And they don't need an Adept around to make them work."
Darkwind started to object, then got a thoughtful look on his face. Tashiketh rested his beak on his foreclaws, looking expectant. "They do," Darkwind replied slowly. "And I was about to say that nodes aren't Heartstones, but Heartstones are a kind of node. Let me think about this one for a moment."
Father Janas simply shrugged. "I haven't the least idea of what you're all talking about," he said cheerfully. "Tremane asked me to sit through this because I know how the earth-binding and earth-magic works. Other than that, my friends, I'm fairly useless. But it does seem to me that for your controlling factor, you could use earth-energy, the very slow and subtle energies that underlie everything, the ones even hedge-wizards and earth-witches use. Those are fundamentally unaffected by the Storms."
Tashiketh raised his head and nodded eagerly; Darkwind looked at Father Janas as if he had unwittingly uttered something profound.
Elspeth had come late to magic and thus undergone a forced-growth process like a hothouse plant. She had never actually worked with such primitive energies as Janas described. But the theory seemed reasonable to her, and both Tashiketh and Father Janas obviously were familiar in detail with how those magics operated. "Well, why don't we just pursue that particular hare until we either catch it or it goes to cover?" she asked decisively.
"It is these energies with which Vykaendys created the Shield-Wall," Tashiketh said thoughtfully. "This is why there is less magical energy to spare within Iftel itself than there is in other lands. It is constantly going to renew the Shield-Wall. If this works, there will be little energy to spare in any of the lands when the Final Storm has passed."
"And the alternative?" Elspeth replied. "I don't think any of us want to contemplate that. Most of us have been doing without a great deal of magic ever since the Storms started, and I doubt that it is going to be too much of a hardship."
"Except for the Vales," Darkwind sighed. "But as you said, the alternative is a great deal less pleasant." He regarded the three of them with an expression so mournful that it almost made Elspeth want to laugh. "I will need your help in asking me very stupid questions, for we will somehow have to unravel the processes by which Tayledras make Heartstones and link them into spells like the Veil. I am so used to being able to do such things that I cannot tell you how I do them. This," he concluded with resignation, "is going to be a very great deal of difficult work, all of it mental."
He was right; it was. They were still only in the earliest stages when Solaris and Tremane returned, and Darkwind remarked via Mindspeech to Elspeth that since there were neither knife wounds nor signs of violence on either of them, the talk must have gone well. Neither of them said anything, and both of them acted as if they did not particularly wish to discuss what had occurred.
The group was not able to get beyond the most basic of understandings that day, nor for several more days, although they all worked feverishly to put together their solution. Only Tremane did not spend every waking hour of the day deep in research and testing; Solaris remarked cryptically that he didn't need to, since his presence was only necessary when they had a solution ready to try. Whatever had passed between them had cleared the air considerably, for Solaris had stopped making her acidic comments and was even distantly friendly to him at times.
Perhaps, not so ironically, it was the discipline and methodology they had learned from Master Levy and the other Master Artificers that enabled them to dissect magic logically, apply the laws they had learned, and find the fundamentals that allowed the magic to work in the first place. Finally, they had all the pieces of a solution; thanks to Darkwind, they all knew how to make a node behave like a very weak Heartstone and how to tie one into a self-sustaining spell. Unlike a Tayledras Heartstone, nodes could only support one such spell, but one was all they would need. They knew how to use earth-energy to power the second spell that would control the first, triggering the spawning of a new shield when the outermost collapsed. Now came the question to which they had no answer, unless Solaris and Tremane already knew it—how to reach every node at the same time.
Then, at last, Tremane rejoined the group.
"Earth-binding," he said succinctly. "Every Tayledras Vale will be able to control the nodes in the territory of that Vale; Solaris will be able to reach the nodes in Karse, the King in Rethwellan the nodes in his land, and so forth. Those leaders will have to undergo the ritual, but the gods know it's simple enough, and once they do, they can immediately protect their nodes."
Elspeth looked askance at him, but Father Janas nodded. "I thought so," he said with satisfaction. "This is one of those few times when the King can affect the land, rather than vice versa."
"I am not looking forward to this," Tremane added bitterly. "When we take this to the next level and involve the entire country, it is going to be extremely unpleasant. But it isn't going to kill me, and I would rather spend a week recovering from the aftereffects of this than have my people face a single node gone rogue. So, let us test our theory on the nearest node to Shonar, and if it works, we will then make all of Hardorn into our second test."
Something about his tone made Elspeth think that the effects of the full-country test were going to be something worse than merely "extremely unpleasant;" she had the feeling that this was going to require every bit of courage Tremane possessed. But there was nothing she could do about it, and she knew very well that her mother would have willingly sacrificed herself in the same cause, as would Solaris, or any other good ruler.
The test on the single node was far less difficult than Elspeth had envisioned; first the controlling-spell was set in place, then the node itself was altered to allow for the linkage of a shield-spell directly to it. This was the part that only an Adept could do, so it was up to Darkwind as the most practiced of all of them in this particular kind of magic, while Solaris "watched" with single-minded intensity.
Then, when everything was in readiness, Darkwind triggered the spell,
just before the next Storm came through.
If Elspeth had not been "watching" at the time, she would never have believed that it was possible, for between one moment and the next, the node disappeared, and in its place was a shielded spot into which ley-lines fed but nothing came out. Then the Storm swept in, and they all waited out the effects.
When they had recovered and were able to "look" again, the node was exactly as it had been before the Storm, shielded and safe.
Tremane looked very much like a man who has received both incredibly good news and incredibly bad news at the same time. "Well, he said, "we know it works."
"How soon do you want to try protecting all of Hardorn?" Father Janas asked him gently.
"Now," he said decisively. "We have until late tonight before the next Storm comes in, and I don't want to be able to sit and brood on this."
Solaris sat straight up and looked him in the eyes. "Tremane Gyfarr Pendleson of Lynnai, don't you dare sit there and pretend to be a martyr! What you are about to endure, I will also have to, and Prince Daren of Valdemar, and Faramentha of Rethwellan, and whoever it is in Iftel—"
"Vykaendys-First Bryron Hess," Tashiketh said helpfully.
"The Son of the Sun in Iftel, and a half-dozen Hawkbrothers and at least one Shin'a'in," Solaris concluded.
:Not to mention as many other leaders we can reach as we think will have lands in jeopardy,: Hansa added helpfully. :There will be a great many leaders with dreadful headaches before this is all over.:
"Exactly! You will not be alone in this, and although you may feel fear because of the justifiable guilt you bear for your other actions in the past, I can assure you that the land will not let you die!" She rose to her feet, full of anger and some other emotion that Elspeth could not put a name to. "If you are afraid, then be a man and admit it, and let us help you through it! You should know that if you are too afraid, the land will resist what we are about to do. We may not be able to overcome that resistance, for the land takes its cues from you."
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