Restlessness overcame his lassitude and weariness. He lurched out of his chair and began pacing. "I'm too young, I'm inexperienced, and if I was a place-holder, neither of those things would matter. But I'm not just a cipher. I'm supposed to be making decisions here; I'm supposed to be representing Karse's best interests. But how can I possibly do that when I'm young enough to be the son of half the people in the room, and the grandson of the other half?"
He was so frustrated and so very, very tired! His repressed emotions boiled over and came pouring out of him in a torrent of impassioned words. At least Altra was listening, rather than cutting him off. "The worst thing is, I know I'm too young, and that shows, too! Altra, these responsibilities are driving me mad! I don't want to sound as if I'm whining, but I am not suited to this, I thought this would only be for a few weeks—that Solaris would send someone else, someone the others would listen to. When we were trying to catch the assassin, it was reasonable to have me as the envoy. It was even reasonable when I was only interacting with the people on Selenay's internal Council—after all, Darkwind and Elspeth and a couple of the others know that I have a good idea now and then and are willing to listen to me because they know me. But now I'm supposed to be dealing with all of these other allies, and they all look at me and see a—a child!" He turned toward the Firecat and held out his hands, imploring Altra to see the dilemma he was in. "Altra, I can't do the task I was given, and there is nothing that is going to make that possible, short of aging me twenty years overnight. I'm doing my best, but this is akin to asking a blind man to sort beads by color. Trying to do what no one will let me do is going to drive me insane without helping Karse!"
Altra had remained silent during this entire outburst. When he finally subsided, Karal bitterly expected the Firecat to deliver a crisp lecture on growing some backbone. After all, that was what he had done on similar occasions in the past.
But Altra did nothing of the sort. He curled his tail tightly around his legs, and sat so quietly that not even a hair moved. His eyes had grown very thoughtful and were looking far away, to some place Karal could not even begin to imagine. His introspection was so deep, Karal wondered if he was actually communing with something—or Some one—else.
After waiting a few moments for a reply, Karal took his seat again, dropping heavily into his padded armchair with a thud. Altra did not seem to notice.
Huh. This is different. He's never acted like this before....
Then, suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, the Firecat leaped straight up into the air—
—and vanished into the patch of sunlight he had appeared out of.
"Oh, now that's an informative answer," Karal growled to the empty air in disgust. "Thanks a lot!"
* * *
Somewhere out there, Natoli and the others were isolating energy patterns, An'desha was helping them analyze the patterns, and Master Levy and his mathematicians were plotting courses. He suspected that Firesong's warning about monsters being created in Hardorn had been taken to heart, and Kerowyn's folk were inventing monsters and ways to deal with them. Somewhere in this very Palace, others were getting actual work done. Somewhere out in Haven, or beyond, artificers were trying to find a way of getting people and supplies in and out of an area quickly, perhaps involving some of Natoli's beloved steam machines.
And I am sitting here waiting for yet another Grand Council meeting. He sighed glumly and then sat up a little straighter as he realized that the Shin'a'in envoy, who had just entered the room himself, was heading, not for his own seat, but straight for Karal.
Oh, glory. Now what? A challenge to personal combat?
He made himself smile, and rose in courtesy as Jarim reached him. "Greetings, sir." Now what do I say? "I trust you realize we are still on the same side?" Or— "Are you still desirous of examining my liver at close range? I fear I cannot oblige you—" He settled for a neutral and polite, "How can I serve you?"
"You can serve me, Envoy, by accepting an apology," the Shin'a'in said brusquely—and grudgingly. But at least he was saying it, which was an improvement. "I overreacted yesterday. My people are protective of their own."
And mine are not? Is that your implication? "I understand, sir," he replied smoothly. "Please, you must understand that I am trying to think of the best use of our admittedly limited resources. I am trying to suggest what is useful for the Alliance as a whole. Your people never encountered the armies of Ancar of Hardorn. My country and Valdemar are low on fighting men and the wherewithal to supply them; your people are mighty warriors, but they do not send folk off the Plains very often, and they would be at a bad disadvantage. The Hawkbrothers are no use as an offensive military force, and Rethwellan has sent all it can afford. I frankly would rather that the Imperials were slowly whittled away by magic-born monsters than that any fighter of the Alliance perish in ridding us of them. We must survive the mage-storms ourselves, after all, and—"
"Yes, yes, I see your point," Jarim interrupted. "But it should be obvious that we are going to have to eliminate these interlopers while we have the chance. They have a long history of conquest, and no border has ever stopped them before. It is pure folly to think that they will allow anything to stop them now, save such a fierce resistance that it is clear even to them that they have met their match in us! The only way to do that is to strike now, strike hard, and remove every trace of their forces from Hardorn. Then and only then will the Empire respect us enough to let us alone!"
He was getting wound up again, and nothing Karal had said had made any difference to him. His words said "we" but it was obvious to Karal that what he wanted was personal revenge on the Empire for daring to murder a Goddess Sworn Shin'a'in.
By now most of the others had arrived, and all of the Grand Council were listening closely to this exchange, obviously waiting to see how he would answer.
But any answer other than the one that Jarim wanted—full agreement—was only going to start another argument. So instead of replying directly to Jarim's statement, he turned to Elspeth, who happened to be nearest to him.
"How long do the mages believe the breakwater will remain intact?" he asked earnestly. "Has anyone an estimate?" It was one question that no one had asked yet—but it was important, because an answer might make it clear that there was no time for personal vengeance—or, indeed, any revenge at all.
"Good question," the Princess replied, arching an eyebrow at Darkwind and Firesong, who edged closer at her signal. "Do either of you have an answer—or even a guess?"
"I would prefer to err conservatively," Firesong replied—earnestly, for once, rather than flippantly. He cast a glance at Karal that looked appreciative. "I would not trust it to hold for more than four months at the most. Through the winter—perhaps. Not much beyond."
"I would give it until summer, but that is certainly no more than six months away at best," Darkwind said, nodding. "Now, given that winter fighting is difficult at best and suicidal at worst, that means we will lose the breakwater before we have any chance at attacking the Imperials."
Karal noticed that Prince Daren was also giving him a look of both appraisement and approval. Evidently he had impressed the Prince-Consort. Jarim looked startled; his eyes widened with shock. "I thought that it would last longer than that," he objected. "You only just put it up!"
Firesong shrugged. "The breakwater loses a bit more of itself with every storm, and the storms are coming more and more frequently. There is a mathematical progression to them. We told you that. The erosion is accelerating. Pity, but we knew when we set it up that all we were doing was buying time, and we tried to make that as clear as possible to all of you."
Firesong can say that, and say it insolently, and get away with it. Jarim respects him; I think he might even be a little afraid of him. Today Firesong was wearing stark and unornamented black, a costume that accentuated both the gold of his Tayledras skin and the vivid silver-blue of his eyes—which only served to remind Jarim that the Hawkbrothers and the
Shin'a'in were related—and the silver of his hair, the reminder of the power he wielded. Firesong was very good at choosing the best costume for the purpose. Today he was obviously in the mood for intimidation. It was a talent Karal wished he had.
Prince Daren stepped forward at that point, and took over the discussion. "Ladies and gentlemen, would you all take your seats? Firesong, would you repeat what you have been saying to everyone? This is important, very important, and I want to make sure there are no misunderstandings."
Daren went to his own seat and sat down, effectively beginning the meeting.
There was some shuffling about as people found their accustomed chairs, and Firesong not only stood up, he stood in the hollow center of the table where the gryphon Treyvan was, with one hand on the gryphon's shoulder. The gryphon twitched an ear-tuft a bit.
"Some of you were part of our earlier Council when we first learned how we could, temporarily, protect the Alliance lands and Iftel from the battering we were taking from the mage-storms," he said gravely. "This we did, and as you are all aware, it was successful. But it was still a temporary solution. Like a shoreline breakwater from which this protection takes its name, it absorbs the force of the waves of the mage-storm, but at a cost to itself. It is eroded, a little more with every battering that it takes. It will come down, collapsing under the repeated battering that it is subject to. Just because you are not feeling the effects of the mage-storms, that does not mean they are not continuing to move in on us. Even if you, yourselves, do not feel the force of one of these storms against your body, somebody out there will. They bring pain and misery and destruction. They are still coming at us, and the frequency and force are increasing as time goes on. We can measure this force, and we are doing so. I estimate that the breakwater will collapse in about four months' time, Darkwind gives it a slightly longer six months. Once again, all that we did was to buy our Alliance time to concoct another solution—one that could involve magic, since our magic is no longer being disrupted by the storms. We told you this was temporary at the time we did it, and we meant it."
That was just about the longest speech Firesong had ever made, and his words were given added impetus when the gryphon nodded with every salient point.
"I have ssseen the effectsss frrrom the airrr, frrriends. They leave the earrrth rrriven in placesss. We sshould be concentrating on the brrreakwaterrr'sss replacement," the gryphon added. "And, frrrankly, on what we can do if we cannot find a replacssement in time. If you thought thingsss werrre bad beforrre—"
He left the sentence unfinished, hanging in the air like the threat that it was.
Although Karal remembered distinctly that this point was made before anyone left Haven to set up the breakwater the first place, the fact that it was not the permanent solution still seemed to come as a complete surprise to many of the officials and envoys, Jarim among them.
"Well, why didn't you put a permanent solution in place?" snapped the head of the dairy farmers.
Firesong leveled a look at the man that should have melted him where he stood. "Oh, and you wanted us to wait to find one?" he asked, then continued. "This phenomenon was as new to us as it was to you; completely unprecedented, and we still don't fully understand it. As I recall, the mage-storms created a few killer cows before we put a halt to them," he said icily. "As it happens, we did the best we could at the time, to save the rest of you from as many of the effects as we could while we tried to put together something better. Would you rather we had let the storms rage across the landscape, turning more cattle into monsters?"
Perhaps the man had seen one of those "killer cows," for he paled and looked shamefaced. "Well, no—but—"
Someone else interrupted with another shouted accusation, which Firesong met with equally devastating wit and logic. Accusations and counter accusations flew for a moment, until it was finally driven home to even the most hardheaded at the table that the mages and artificers had not somehow "cheated" them—that they had done what they could at the time. "Like a barricade of sandbags holding back floodwaters," was Elspeth's analogy.
The uproar settled into silence, and it was Jarim who was bold enough to break it.
"Well, if this is only temporary, then what are we going to do?" he asked testily. "Have you people made any progress at all?"
What does he want us to say? They've already told him everything they know!
Darkwind sighed, and Elspeth patted his shoulder. "Well, candidly, not much," he said wearily. "We don't have enough facts yet—"
"Why not?" Jarim interrupted. "Why haven't you made any progress?"
"We have made plenty of progress! It is only magic we use, were you expecting miracles?" Firesong shot back testily. "If you want miracles, speak directly to a God. Or a Goddess." That last was a shrewd hit on Firesong's part, since Jarim, unlike Querna, was not Sworn to the Star-Eyed. He could pretend to no special communication with his deity, no more than any other Shin'a'in had.
Karal closed his eyes and just let the words wash over him, as Darkwind and Elspeth tried to put into nonmagical terms the things that they had learned, and Firesong added acidic rejoinders whenever someone questioned their progress. He was not a mage, and very little of what they said made sense to him. He could ask An'desha later, when he needed to write up a summation for Solaris.
Solaris. What was she doing, back home in Karse? Was she holding onto her leadership with the same firmness as before? Surely Vkandis Sunlord will keep Karse safe, no matter what, he told himself, and felt a twinge of guilt for such an unworthy thought. He was supposed to be thinking on a wider stage than just Karse; it was the welfare of the Alliance that was as important as Karse's welfare.
But Karse was where his interests lay, and it was Karse's interests he was representing. So was it so bad that he took comfort in the fact that Vkandis held His hand over His chosen land?
As a priest, he must believe that, anyway. To doubt was to doubt the word and the promises of Vkandis....
Except that He has said in His Writ that we must rely on the intelligence and wit that He gave us, that He protects us only in extremis. What if there is a solution here and we simply fail to reach it because we do not try hard enough? Would He still protect us then?
He felt his face grow cold and pale.
The uncertainty of it all was terrifying.
Oh, glory—what was happening to him? Now was he beginning to doubt even his own God?
What could he do, anyway? He was no mage; he knew next to nothing about magic or mathematics. He could only place his trust in others, in the hands and minds of those who did understand all of this. Elspeth and Darkwind, the gryphons, Firesong and An'desha, the mages of Rethwellan recruited by Kerowyn, the fledgling Herald-Mages of Valdemar trained by all of the others, the Priest-Mages of Karse; these were the folk that needed the help and guidance of Vkandis in their endeavor—and any other deity who happened to be interested. Perhaps the best thing he could do now was to pray. At least he understood how to do that.
Right now, he was just very, very tired... and very homesick. I would much rather be the secretary to anyone, even one of those rigid old sticks who disliked Ulrich and Solaris, than be the envoy myself. It's not that I don't want the responsibility—it's that I can't get the authority to take care of the responsibility.
So today, rather than try to make anyone listen to him, he just took notes whenever he caught something he understood. If I have a point I want raised, I'll write it down give it to Elspeth or Darkwind later, he decided. That's doing my duty by the Alliance as a whole, even if it isn't accomplishing anything for Karse.
Right now, that was the only solution he could think of.
Three
An'desha dropped another pebble into the water-table, and watched the resulting waves break up and disperse on the model. The elegant concentric rings quickly turned into a chaos of wavelets and counter wavelets amid the barriers placed there, and he shook his head in despair. He'd been told about this, but
he hadn't believed it until this moment. "This is too complicated even to see, much less measure and analyze," he said bitterly. "And this is only a model. The reality is a hundred times worse!"
Master Levy gave him a sidelong, sardonic glance of approval. "For an unlettered barbarian who believes in curses and spell casting you show a surprising grasp of logic," he said dryly. "And a remarkable understanding of the difficulties of measurement and analysis in a moving system."
An'desha was not about to be goaded. "For a hard-headed statue who only believes in what he can see, weigh, and measure, you show a surprising flexibility," he countered. "And besides, you know very well that I read, speak, and write more languages than you, so although I am a barbarian, I am hardly unlettered. Now, shall we dispense with the insulting small talk and get on with this?"
But Master Levy only sighed with frustration. "At the moment," he admitted, "small talk is all I have to offer. I am venting my frustration in sarcasm. You are correct, the reality is too complex to calculate. I haven't been able to derive any kind of formula, and if I cannot, I doubt that anyone else would be able to."
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