Storm rising

by Mercedes Lackey

  Lo'isha looked very, very thoughtful and stood up, clearing his throat and getting everyone's attention. All activity slowed and stopped, and attention went to the Shin'a'in.

  "For the sake of clarity, I am going to impart something that some of you may already know," he said. "This was once a closely-guarded secret among my people, but there is a time when secrets need to be revealed. After the Cataclysm, all of the people formerly known as the Kaled'a'in—"

  "Except for Clan k'Leshya—" interrupted a k'Leshya mage.

  "Yes, except for k'Leshya—gathered at the edge of the crater that had once been their homeland—which was also the place where Urtho's Tower had stood. They divided over how magic was to be dealt with in the future, and became the two cousin-peoples, the Shin'a'in and the Tayledras. To the Hawkbrothers, who chose to follow the ways of the mage still, the Star-Eyed Goddess gave the task of cleansing the lands warped by the magics of the Cataclysm. To the Shin'a'in, who chose to ever after avoid the use of all magics save those of the Shaman, she gave another task." He paused, closing his eyes for a moment. "In exchange for this, she restored our home, and since we were vowed to use no magic, we did not experience the effects of the mage-storms of the time. The task we were given was to guard the Plains from all outsiders. This much is common knowledge. What is not common knowledge is the reason for the task. In the center of the Plains, at a site known only to the Sworn of the four faces of the Goddess, lie the remains of Urtho's Tower. Buried beneath the surface are the weapons Urtho did not and would not use. They are very powerful. And they are still alive and ready for use, according to our traditions. At least one of these should be the very thing that we need."

  The Shin'a'in drew his dagger and laid it flat on the table. "It is time to end the Guardianship."

  Jaws were dropping all around the table, Karal's not the least.

  "Here is the one problem that I foresee—and given that we have our Kaled'a'in brothers and sisters of k'Leshya with us, this may be less of a problem than I had thought," the Sworn One continued. "Once we unearth the weapons' vault, which should still be intact, we will have to search through what is there to find a suitable weapon. And we will have to determine how to make it work, or how to adapt it to our need." He smiled slightly. "Needless to say, Urtho did not leave an inventory nor a book of instructions with them."

  Karal realized he had stopped breathing with surprise, and forced himself to take a deep lungful of air.

  Treyvan shook his feathers, and nibbled a talon. "I rrrecall a litany, much like the Tayledrrrasss litany of 'frrriendly beassstss,' that we magesss of k'Lessshya arrre all rrrequirred to learrrn."

  "The 'Garland of Death,' of course," supplied one of the humans. "That could be an inventory and set of descriptions! But I always thought it was just a memory-exercise with a particularly morbid name—"

  "And ssso it isss," Treyvan agreed. "But like ssso many thingsss in ourrr teaching, it hasss morrre than one Purrrpossse, I think."

  "Another problem—" said a voice from the door. Firesong strode in, with Silverfox beside him. "I beg your pardon for being late, but I was checking some calculations of my own. Ladies and gentlemen, we knew we were chasing a deadline, but I now know the exact moment of that deadline. How are we to get to the Dhorisha Plains before the breakwater collapses? We have only until a fortnight after Midwinter Day to reach the Plains—in the winter, across two countries. Then we must travel to the center of the Plains, and sort through the contents of this Vault. just how are we to manage that?"

  Silence. Then, into the silence, Elspeth spoke.

  "There is a permanent Gate near k'Leshya Vale on the rim of the crater," she said. "There must be—Falconsbane vanished from there, and how else—"

  "Yes!" An'desha shouted excitedly. "There is, I remember! I know right where it is! But how are we going to reach there from here?"

  "Piffle. A trifle," said Sejanes.

  Now all eyes turned to him, as he smiled broadly and presented his knowledge to them as a wise old grandfather presenting candy to a room full of children.

  "We of the Empire are the Masters of Portals—you call them Gates. We can find them at great distances, we can key into strange Portals, and we can build Portals that are permanent structures. But most of all, we know how to construct them using energies outside of ourselves, or the joined energies of several mages." His smile broadened, and he spread his hands wide. "I can teach even the apprentices among you how to join together with a single Adept to construct such a Portal, and given that another permanent Portal will anchor the other end, we should be able to make it self-sustaining for a limited time. Will that serve as our means to your ruined Tower?"

  After all the tumultuous months of bickering, near-blood feud fear, derision, and anger, they held more than just nebulous hope in their hands. Inventive minds, people of different cultures and backgrounds, had come together and despite the friction between them, had held on to reason. It all sounded too easy, to hear it spoken in series—and yet, the pieces had all been there. Once the need was identified, they slipped into formation like well-trained soldiers. Karal was dazed at how nearly they had escaped disaster—

  We could still have a disaster, he cautioned himself. Don't count the larks until they are safely fledged.

  But. But! If he had not overcome his repugnance and started in motion the negotiations with Tremane—if k'Leshya had waited to send their delegation—if the Sworn-Shaman had decided to leave things in the hands of Jarim—if Elspeth and An'desha had not recalled how Falconsbane had made a miraculous escape from the Shin'a'in Sword-Sworn—

  Yet everything had been there, and who was to say that if they had not put this solution together there would not have been another one? Altra and Hansa could jump people in pairs. Or maybe more than pairs—Altra jumped me, An'desha, and Florian at the same time. We might have been able to work out something with Final Strikes, only less drastic. We could have shielded the Heartstones with everything we have, waited until the breakwater failed, endured a single round of the storms, and then gone to the Plains.

  No, this was not the only solution, and any of the pieces that had fallen neatly into place could have been replaced by another piece—but just at the moment, it looked as if it was the best solution.

  What was important was that everyone who possessed a piece to contribute, had.

  Once a start at a solution had been identified, people began volunteering—or declining to volunteer—for the expedition. The usual restless souls volunteered—Firesong, Treyvan and Hydona (who would have flown through fire for a chance to visit Urtho's Tower, or the remains of it), An'desha. There were some surprises—Elspeth and Darkwind declined, planning instead to hold the shielding on the Valdemar Heartstone, and Silverfox volunteered, saying that they had better have someone along with rudimentary Healer knowledge. Florian volunteered ("To stand for Valdemar"). The Shin'a'in Sworn Shaman Lo'isha was going, of course, it was his homeland. The White Winds mages declared themselves out of their depth. Altra was going.

  But last of all, Karal was going though he was no mage; An'desha and Altra had both insisted on it, although he could not imagine why they needed him. :Contingency,: Altra had said cryptically.

  He only hoped this "contingency" would not involve a situation similar to the one on the Iftel border. Acting as a channel for whatever power that held sway behind those magical barriers—whatever it was that a channel did—had ranked right up with all of the worst personal experiences in his life. He really didn't want to repeat it.

  An'desha said that he just wanted Karal as a buffer between himself and Firesong. That was a role easier to handle.

  He wanted to stay with Natoli, and his sense of duty warred with his wishes. If Altra wanted him to go, there must be a reason connected with his duties as a Priest. But Natoli needed him, too.

  It was finally Natoli herself who solved his dilemma for him.

  He went to visit her in her room at Healer's Collegium, and d
escribed all the preparations being made for the journey to the remains of the Tower. She listened with interest, as she nursed her bandaged and splinted wrist close to her body.

  "I wish I could go," she said wistfully. "Even though I probably wouldn't actually see anything happening. just think of how old that Tower is! Think of what you could learn from inscriptions there if there are any! And what if there are books preserved in there somehow—why, who knows what new tracks they would send us off on!" She sighed, and looked ruefully at the bandages still covering her injuries. "But I can't, and that's that. You're going to be traveling fast to get across the bowl of the Plains in time, and you can't have anyone along who would slow you down."

  "What do you mean by, 'you're going to be traveling fast'?" he asked. "No one's ordered me to go."

  "No one's ordered you, but I thought you told me that An'desha and Altra both wanted you to go," she replied with surprise.

  "They can want as much as they please," he said stubbornly. "I'm making up my own mind on this one. I've had my fill of other people making it up for me."

  She frowned. "Are you going with the mages to the Plains or not?" she demanded. "If you don't want to because you don't want to, that's one thing, but you'd better not be wavering on this because of me!"

  He was taken aback by the stern tone of her voice, and the hint of anger in her eyes. "Why not?" he asked.

  "Because I won't have it, that's why!" she exclaimed. "If Altra wants you to go, doesn't that mean it's your duty to go? I won't have you neglecting your duty just because you want to keep me company! I don't expect or want that kind of behavior out of you, and you'd better not expect or want it out of me!"

  Her vehemence left him speechless for a moment, and she filled in the silence.

  "My job is to uncover new facts, find new ways of doing things, and sometimes that's dangerous," she continued, calming her tone of voice somewhat. "Well, look what happened with the boiler. I could have been killed!"

  "I know—" he said numbly.

  "So?" she gazed at him demandingly. "Would you ask me to choose between you and my work?"

  If I did, I'd lose her, he realized. She has a right to her work, her life. I don't have a right to ask her to give up any of that.

  "No," he replied quietly.

  "And I don't and won't ask the same of you," she replied, as her fingers brushed restlessly back and forth along the bandages on her arm. "It's not fair and it's not right. This thing the mages are doing—it's dangerous, isn't it?"

  He shivered. "More than dangerous. The Shin'a'in know where the Tower is, of course, and they've been working to uncover the entrance to the Vault since we decided what to do—but once we get in there, we'll be sorting through weapons that are very old, probably unstable, and not all of them are magical in nature. The mechanical weapons may be very unstable, the others think. Then when we find what we're looking for, we aren't sure what, exactly, we're going to be dealing with."

  He heard himself saying "we" before he thought about it, and knew she'd noticed the phrasing when she smiled.

  "So you're going." She made it a statement.

  He sighed. "If Altra wants me along and he's being cryptic, it's because there's something he thinks I might have to do, and it's something he knows I probably wouldn't do if I had any choice." He grimaced. "I'm sure if I don't go, they'll find a way around any problems they encounter, but I'm also sure that it will be easier if I do go. In a case like this—the next best solution might not be good enough."

  She reached for his hand with her uninjured one. "You know how you'd feel if this failed because you weren't there."

  "If this fails, we're going to be in worse trouble than Hardorn is now," he corrected and shivered. "Think what would happen if the shielding all failed on the Heartstone here."

  She blanched, as well she should.

  "But we may be worrying at nothing," he went on, "And I may prove to be no more useful than an extra pair of hands to brew tea. If Altra knew I was needed, he wouldn't be giving me a choice. He said I should go as a 'contingency' measure. We've had everyone with any kind of ForeSight trying to probe in the direction of this situation, and none of them can tell us anything. They say that the images are all too confused, and that there is no clear path to the future once they get past the fact that we do find the Vault and we do find the weapons there." As he squeezed her hand, he allowed himself a moment of annoyance. "Now tell me this—what good does it do to be a Priest or to be able to talk with Avatars if neither your God nor the representatives of your Goddess are going to give you any clues?"

  Natoli chewed her lip thoughtfully for a moment. "I've been listening to you and An'desha talking about Vkandis and the Star-Eyed, and I wonder if this isn't another one of those cases where there are many choices, and since none of the choices are a Second Cataclysm, They aren't going to help. I mean—they watch while people kill people and let people die all the time, and only take a hand in things once in a while, when it will make a big difference down the road. The rest of the time, people have to do what they feel they should, and accept the results. It's that 'free will' thing again."

  He groaned. "I could do with a little more guidance and a little less free will!"

  "I couldn't." Once again, she surprised him. "I want to make my own decisions, and if they're the wrong ones, then I'll learn from them. I want to be an adult, not a child. I don't want to be led along the safe path! The safe path is never new, and the safe path never teaches you anything others don't already know!"

  Had she always been like this, or had the enforced idleness given her time to think about these things? He was astonished at the clarity and fearlessness of her outlook. "A lot of people wouldn't agree with you," he replied, answering her as seriously as she had spoken. "A great many people would rather have the safe path, and be taken care of. They'd rather have all their answers assured, neatly packaged, with 'the end' put on the last page."

  "Then they can look for that neat package, but it's a false one, and they're only fooling themselves." Her eyes were shining, and her color heightened with excitement. "There is no end to questioning, except decay. And I'm not ready to sit and rot, and neither are you."

  "You're right, I'm not." He leaned over then, and dared a kiss; her lips were warm and soft and she didn't pull away. "And you're right; I should go. I'll be lonely without you, but I'll go."

  Natoli squeezed his hand and whispered, "Be brave, Karal, and be careful. Come back to me."

  Sejanes led a group of mixed Herald-Mages and White Winds mages who would be establishing the Gate under his direction and control; as Altra and Hansa had, they were using the old ruin in Companion's Field. "They're going to be worthless when we're done," he'd warned Selenay. "And they're going to be weak as newborn kittens for at least a day." Accordingly, she had sent along a contingent of servants with litters to carry them off when they collapsed. Sejanes had approved.

  Now the expedition force stood in knee-deep snow beneath an overcast sky while Sejanes reiterated the plan. "We'll hold the Portal open long enough for you all to get through," he said, squinting into the bright snow glare. "That's all this lot will be good for. We'll reopen it in a fortnight, and you'd better be up on that rim when we do."

  "You'll reopen it if you can," muttered one of the k'Leshya mages. "If they don't succeed, you'll have more than the Portal to worry about."

  Sejanes ignored that—or perhaps he simply didn't hear it. "If you aren't there, we'll reopen it one more time a fortnight later, then send word to call up search parties down there." He paused and favored the k'Leshya mage with a sharp glance. Perhaps he had heard the mutter. "If, however, the force of your weapon deactivates the Gate at your end, you will have to find another way back here."

  "In other words," Firesong said, laughing, "we walk home."

  :Not precisely.:

  Heads snapped up all over the group, as even those who did not have Mindspeech reacted to that voice in their heads.

/>   A Companion stallion emerged from the trees to their left, leading a group of four more, all of them young, all nervously tossing their heads, and all wearing saddles and halters. Not the fancy tack of a Companion on search for his Chosen, but the everyday stuff a working Companion used.

  :Rolan would like you to relay the rest, Karal,: Florian said, as he nudged Karal's shoulder with his nose. :He can Mindspeak with anyone he wishes to, but it takes a lot of effort, and this will be faster.:

  "Ah—this is Rolan, he's the Queen's Own Companion" Karal said hastily.

  :These are four of the fastest and strongest of the Companions who have not Chosen Heralds, and they have been picked by Rolan out of the volunteers to serve as mounts for those who need them.:

  "Unpartnered Companions volunteered to carry the humans of our group," Karal interpreted. "These are the best." He knew from his own experience that no horse could ever keep up with a Companion, and if somehow the others had missed that particular piece of information, they'd soon figure it out!

  :Rolan has made assignments.: The stallion tossed his head, and a muscular male with a short mane and tail stepped forward and bowed to the Sworn Shaman. :This is Kayka.:

  "Your mount is called Kayka, sir," Karal told that worthy, who bowed to the stallion.

  "I am honored, Kayka." Lo'isha's tone made it clear that he meant his words, they were not just for politeness' sake.

  Two mares with artistically flowing manes and tails tripped forward together, stopping in front of Firesong and Silverfox. :Twin sisters, Senta and Sartra. Senta will take Firesong, and says—:

  "I can hear what she says, thank you, Florian," Firesong interrupted dryly. "And I assure you, I actually do know how to travel lightly. Remember? I came here with only what my dyheli friend could carry." He turned to the Companion and bowed to her as deeply as the shaman had bowed to Kayka, though with a touch more irony. "I am grateful for your assistance, Senta, and I appreciate your beauty."