Storm rising

by Mercedes Lackey

  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."