Storm Breaking

That betrayal was as bitter as any experience in Charliss' long life and reign, and it would not go unpunished. It was a pity that Tremane had left no potential hostage in the form of a wife or child at Court, and that his Estate was so far away on the borders of the Empire that reaching it to despoil it was about as practical as going after Tremane himself. Of course, Charliss could and would assign it to someone else, but that was an empty gesture, and both he and the recipient would be well aware of that. No one would be able to get there until late spring at best, and if the Empire continued to fall apart, they might as well not try.

Still, a gesture would have to be made, hollow or not. These people below him, fools though they were, would have to be shown once again that he was the Emperor, and he was not to be trifled with.

He signaled to his majordomo, who rapped his staff three times on the marble of the floor to gain the Court's attention. Nothing disturbed the icy tranquillity of the majordomo's demeanor; men had been cut down by the imperial Guards at his very feet and he had not turned a hair. Arrayed in a splendor of purple velvet and gold bullion embroidery, and bearing the wolf-headed Imperial Staff which stood taller than he was, no mage-made homunculus or clockwork manikin could have been more controlled than he.

So completely did his office subsume him that Charliss did not even know his name.

Silence fell immediately with the first rap, so that the next two echoed down the hall with the impact of Death himself rapping on a door. All eyes turned at once to the Iron Throne, and Charliss stood up to face them all, his heavy robes dragging at his shoulders. He braced his calves against the Throne, grateful for the invisible support.

He could have had the majordomo make the announcements, but that would lessen the impact, and it might give the impression that he was no longer vigorous. He could not have that, especially not now. He must appear to be as powerful now as the day he took the Throne.

His voice echoed portentously out over the crowd of courtiers, amplified and rendered more imposing by clever acoustical design around the dais. "Intelligence has reached Our ears that gravely grieves and angers Us," he said sternly into the silence. "We have received news from an unimpeachable source that Tremane, Grand Duke of Lynnai, has turned traitor to the Empire, to his vows, and to Us."

The gasps of surprise that rippled through the Court were not feigned, and only confirmed Charliss' impression that those courtiers still remaining were for the most part not among his brightest and best. He scanned for a few particular faces, men and a few women who were numbered among his advisers—and there was no surprise or shock registering there.

Good. It's agreeable to know that I haven't chosen any complete idiots.

"There can be no doubt of his intent or his thoughts," Charliss continued, as the gasps and murmurs died down again. "He has orchestrated the looting of an Imperial storage depot for his own profit, including the contents of the exchequer there, monies intended to pay the faithful soldiers of the Empire their just and well-earned stipends."

He cast a glance at the stiff figures lining the walls. Ah, my own guards are looking black at that one. Good. Word will spread through the rest of the Army, and may the Hundred Little Gods help him if he shows his face where a single Imperial soldier can find him. Of all the truths in the Empire guaranteed to preserve life, limb, and prosperity, this was the truest: Pay the Army, pay it well, and pay it on time.

Charliss permitted a touch of his anger to show on his face and in his voice. "He has declared his allegiance to the Empire at an end, and has subverted his troops, entrusted to him, to renounce their oaths as well. He has broken off hostilities with the rebels of Hardorn, has entered into unlawful and traitorous alliance with them, and is acting in all ways to have set himself up as King of that benighted land."

Shaking heads and avid looks told him that every one of the power seekers still gathered here was hoping for profit from Tremane's downfall. Well, in the void left when a great tree fell, little trees could climb to reach the sun. Even in these strange days, that might still come to pass.

Now, however, was the time to alert these idiots to their danger. "Worst of all, he has entered into alliance with the vile and duplicitous monarch of Valdemar, which nation has sent unprovoked assaults by magic lately against this, our peaceful Empire." He paused for a breath, steadying himself against the Throne under cover of his robes. That last was only supposition, but even those with intelligence networks the near-equal of his could not be certain of that, and really, would not care. Tremane had no friends here; those who had been nominally his allies would be scrambling for new men to attach themselves and their fortunes to. And proving that the current misfortunes had a recognizable origin might consolidate some of these idiots into a cohesive whole. There was nothing quite like a common enemy to make a force out of disparate and bickering parties.

Now to show them that the old lion had teeth. He put on his most dreadful look, the one that left even hardened guards with trembling hands and quaking knees, and made his next words thunder out like the pronouncement of some barbarian god. "We therefore declare Tremane of Lynnai a traitor, his title and lands forfeit, and his name anathema! We pronounce upon him the sentence of death, to be executed by any that have the means and opportunity! Let no loyal citizen of the Empire aid him, on pain of that same sentence; let his name be stricken from the rolls of his family, and let the House of Lynnai die with his father! Let his name be chiseled from monuments of battle, be erased from the records of the Empire, and let it be as if he never was born!"

That was the harshest sentence possible to pronounce within the Empire, and no few faces below him turned pale. For most of these people, this erasure was worse than a sentence of execution, for it extended Tremane's punishment into the Hereafter. If and when Tremane did die, he would have no immortality, for without some record on earth of who and what he had been, his soul would vanish at the moment of his death, or would wander aimlessly in the cheerless, empty limbo between earth and the afterlife, without any knowledge of who it had once been...

Or so it was believed. When a citizen of the Empire believed anything. he believed in the immortality of records; when he worshiped anything, he always included his ancestors. To remove someone from his rightful place among his ancestors was to remove a piece of the very cosmos.

Charliss smiled grimly. Now they know I haven't gone soft, just because I was prepared to name a possible Heir.

He allowed his expression to soften. "We know that this has come as a great shock to all Our loyal subjects, the more especially as the Nameless One had been put forth as the potential Heir to the Imperial Crown. Such a betrayal harms you as well as Us, by threatening the security of the Empire. We would not see Our children distressed by the taint of betrayal mingled with uncertainty. Therefore, We now do name Our successor, and bestow on him all those lands, goods, and titles that were once the property of the Nameless One."

The looks of greed and avidity were back—though only briefly, and quickly controlled. At this moment, no one knew who Charliss was going to name, least of all the recipient. Once Tremane had been designated, Charliss had taken pains to show no partiality to anyone else; he had wanted to give Tremane as fair a playing field as possible in a Court as filled with intrigue as this one. And besides, by not showing favor to any one person. he had virtually opened up the field—if Tremane failed to conquer Hardorn—to anyone. The scrambling and jockeying had been most amusing when he'd had the leisure to take note of it. Every one of his advisers had the potential to be named Heir as far as anyone knew, and several of his mages as well. Those who thought themselves in the running were moving up through the crowd, almost without realizing that they were doing so, attempting to place themselves nearer the Throne, where he could see them better.

But his thoughts were wandering, the suspense was about to send one or two out there into a fit of apoplexy.

He had to end the suspense, although there would be several who were shocked or affronted at his choice. Nevertheless, Melles had been his second choice before he sent Tremane off to conquer Hardorn, and Melles had remained in that position all along. "We therefore do name as successor and Heir, the most worthy and knowledgeable adviser and most loyal servant of the Empire, Court Baron Melles."

He had just named Tremane's most fervent and implacable enemy. And if anyone was going to put in the astounding effort it would take merely to attempt to execute the Imperial death sentence on Tremane, it would be Melles. There was real hatred between the two of them, a hatred more powerful than Charliss had witnessed in a very long time. There was not much room for hatred in the Imperial Court; it was better to keep emotions superficial, for today's enemy might be tomorrow's ally.

Melles had been standing just to one side of the dais, visible, but unobtrusive, as was his normal habit. He was a slightly better-looking version of Tremane in some ways; thinner and not as muscular, with none of the physical attributes of a fighter. He was not balding; his hair was darker, and he was two or three years Tremane's junior. Otherwise, though, they could have been cut from the same cloth and sewn by the same tailor. Both of them had cultivated the art of being ignored and overlooked, though Charliss suspected that their motives for this differed greatly. He knew what Melles' motives were; now, in retrospect, he could guess at Tremane's.

Melles was not a hereditary noble like Tremane; he was a Court Baron, a man with a title but no lands, as his father had been before him. Melles' wealth came from trade, as did the wealth of most of the Court nobles, although the commodity that Melles bought and sold was quite unlike that of his livestock-brokering father. It was no secret that an ambitious tradesman with enough ready cash could buy a Court title for himself, and with further applications of his wealth could arrange for the title to be inherited by his son. There was no shame in this—though many of the Court nobles were extraordinarily touchy about their titles, and many of the landed gentry made no secret of the fact that they considered the Court nobles to be purest upstarts. There was some friction between the two factions, although it was quite astonishing how quickly that friction vanished when a family with title but no fortune was presented with the heir or heiress to a fortune with no title as a matrimonial prospect.

Was that how the enmity had begun between Tremane and Melles? Had Tremane, or Tremane's father, snubbed Melles or Melles' father? It seemed unlikely that such hatred could spring from so trifling a cause. Oddly enough, Charliss could not imagine Tremane being rude to anyone, not even to someone he held in contempt. Tremane had always been too clever to make such enemies casually.

Well, it didn't really matter now. whatever the cause, it served the Emperor's ends.

Barron—now Grand Duke—Melles moved forward out of the knot of courtiers at the very foot of the steps leading to the dais. He stood alone for a moment, then walked with solemn deliberation up the three steps permitted to one of his new title, bowing his head and going to his knee at the fourth. Charliss motioned to the guard at his right to bring up the coronet of the Heir from the niche at the side of the dais where it had resided since Charliss himself had resigned it to put on the Wolf Crown.

Although the acts of this ceremony appeared spontaneous, it was anything but. It was another dance, the steps dictated by the custom of ages past, every move choreographed centuries ago. Only the participants in the dance changed, never the steps themselves.

Even the guard who brought the coronet to Melles had rehearsed just this action a thousand times, even though there was no telling which guard would be directed to retrieve the circlet, nor who it would be given to. It was simply a part of an Imperial Guard's duty, rehearsed along with every other part.

The guard performed flawlessly, handing the circlet to Melles, who in accordance with tradition, solemnly crowned himself, just as he would crown himself with the Wolf Crown when Charliss died. Power and authority in the Empire came from within the man, and were not bestowed by the hands of priests, and in token of that, every Emperor and Heir bestowed the trappings of power upon himself.

Once crowned—not that the coronet was all that imposing, just an iron circlet in the shape of a sword, with a topaz matching those in the Wolf Crown set as the pommel-nut—Melles stood up, and bowed to his Emperor. Charliss surveyed him with satisfaction, thinking that he probably should have chosen Melles in the first place. Unlike Tremane, Melles was a powerful Adept who could, with a few decades of practice, be Charliss' equal in magic. Given that, and despite current conditions, it was just barely possible that Melles would contrive to bring back Tremane's head.

Charliss mentally resolved to resign on the spot if Melles managed to pull that one off. Not that he considered it likely, but such diligence would deserve a reward, and there wasn't much else Charliss would be able to give him.

And if he can do that, he'll be strong enough to take the Wolf Crown from me. It would be better to resign it with grace, and concentrate on keeping myself alive.

No matter how powerfully his enemies among the courtiers would gladly have plunged daggers into Melles' heart at that moment, not one of them would betray himself. "Go and take your well-deserved congratulations from Our Court," Charliss directed with cool approval. "We will discuss your new duties and privileges later."

Melles bowed, and backed down the steps. There was no throne for the Heir, nor any special place for him at Court ceremonies. Emperors of the past had not deemed it necessary or advisable to give their Heirs too much power or the appearance of it lest they acquire an addiction to it and crave more. As Melles turned at the foot of the steps to face those thronging to greet him, Charliss decided that the Emperors of the past had been very wise. Melles could certainly be one of those who would crave more than his just due.

Charliss decided to keep him on a short leash, as he watched the dance of power begin swirling about this new center.

One Tremane was enough, after all.

Melles had often thought, of late, that there had been so many upheavals that there was nothing that could evoke the feeling of surprise in him anymore. And although his intelligence network was extraordinary—in fact, it had been one of his spies who had brought word of Tremane's defection back to Crag Castle—he really had not expected to be named Charliss' Heir.

According to his own calculations, he wasn't the logical candidate, even though there were personal considerations involved. Since the onset of the mage-storms and the consequent disasters spread over the entire Empire, it had seemed to him that the Emperor would have to name someone who had absolutely no enemies at Court whatsoever. Whoever came after Charliss would have to cope with a much-reduced Empire, revolt everywhere, a possibly hostile Army; he would have to somehow convince the worst of enemies to act together and forge alliances until the Empire was stable again. Melles had far too many enemies who would rather die than work with him in any way; Tremane was not the only one, nor was he even the most deadly. Melles was a man who made enemies far more easily than allies. On the whole, he preferred enemies, for it was much easier to manipulate them than allies, and there was never the risk of disillusion when they realized they had been manipulated.

Friends were quite out of the question; a friend was a potential hole in one's armor, and he had not permitted himself such a weakness since he became a man. Then there was the matter of his position and duties under Charliss, which did not endear him to anyone. He could not think of a single person who liked him in the entire Court. Many feared him, some admired him grudgingly, others tolerated him as a necessary evil, but no one liked him.

But there they all were, flocking to fawn on him as if they couldn't wait to become his best friend. Some of them, in fact, might very well have plans in that direction, foolish as such plans might be. He was, after all, surrounded by fools; they wouldn't be here now if they weren't.

He smiled and accepted their congratulations with an expression that suggested that he would be eager to become their best friend. Why not? Even fools had their uses, and just like the Emperor who had bestowed his new title, he had never been the kind who threw away a potential tool.

The men thronged about him first, jostling one another in their eagerness to say something that he might remember later, reminding him of past favors they had done for him, offering favors for the future. It was quite astonishing, the sort of things they considered to be "favors;" he could not for a moment imagine why anyone could think that invitations to incredibly boring social gatherings featuring meaningless entertainments would ever be sought after.

And the women! They were worse than the men! If they were unmarried, they were pressing about him with looks and poses that were just short of open invitations to do as he pleased with them. If they were anything other than blissfully, happily married (and there were damned few of those at Court, especially now!) they were behaving the same. If they had daughters of anything resembling marriageable age—and plenty of these women had very liberal ideas about what constituted "marriageable age"—they were alluding to their daughters' admiration of him, and dangling invitations on their behalf.

As if any of them had the faintest notion who I am or what I look like—

No, that was unfair, Not all of these people were here because they were blind idiots who wouldn't have their Season spoiled by a few petty disasters. Some were here because they couldn't get back to their Estates, others because of their positions as Imperial Advisers, and some because they had no Estates. There were young girls—and not so young girls—who knew very well who he was and what he looked like, as they knew the identities, properties, and titles of every unwedded man expected to be at Court this Season. That was part of their duty, as they and their parents went about the serious business of husband hunting. He might not have been very high on their list of desirable matches until now, but they knew who he was.

And if he made an appearance at a private party, a musical evening, or other entertainment, each of them would proceed with grim determination to try to convince him that nothing would make him happier than to take her as his lawfully wedded soon-to-be-Empress.

That no less than an hour ago most if not all of these maidens would have cheerfully confessed that the idea of wedding him made them ill was of no consequence now.

Look how these same women throw themselves at Charliss the old mummy! It isn't his handsome face that makes them act like shameless cows in season around him. Furthermore, Melles was well aware that if he had evidenced any preference for young men he would still be under siege from these women and their parents. After all, he would still be expected to try to produce an Heir of his body. The fact that only about half of the Emperors of the past had been the physical offspring of their predecessor didn't matter, he would still be expected to try.

And if some of what I've read in the private Archives is true, some of them went to some fascinating extremes in trying...

Well, that didn't matter either. He wasn't a lover of men or boys, and not of little girls either. But he would wait until he wore the Iron Crown himself before he took a wife, and when he did, his first choice would be an orphan with no living family left whatsoever, just for spite!

"Yes, of course," he murmured to one of the women—after being certain that he was not agreeing to anything of importance. It would be a grand joke on all of them if he selected his bride from among the common citizens. It would certainly be easy to find an attractive orphan there!

He whispered an aside to one of the other advisers, a man who had been a disinterested ally in the past. This is all going to my head. There will be time to think about women later, now is the time to concentrate on consolidating my base of power, and determining what can best be done to get the Empire through this crisis.

Pleasures of all sorts would have to wait until the Empire was stable. Perhaps sometime in the future there might even be an opportunity to execute the Emperor's sentence of death on Tremane. But that time was not now, and he would wait for it to come to him. Hatred was an emotion that brought him a great deal of energy and entertainment, and he enjoyed it.

It was not for nothing that his enemies often compared him to a spider sitting in the middle of a web. If there was one virtue he possessed, it was patience, for patience was the only virtue that eventually brought rewards.

Now that the dance of courtiers and Court was over and the business of the Empire had been disposed of in Council, Melles got his private audience with the Emperor. Private? Well, not precisely; the Emperor was never alone. But no one of any pretense to wealth or rank in the Empire ever really noticed servants or bodyguards—

Unless, of course, that person was Melles, or someone like him. To the Emperor, without a doubt, they were invisible. To Melles they were possible spies.

The subject of conversation, as befitting the position and duties of the new Heir, was the state of the Empire. Melles was not particularly surprised to discover that Charliss had less information on this subject than he did. The Emperor had not been concerned with the day-to-day workings of his Empire for decades; he had been able to leave that to his underlings.

In Melles' opinion, he no longer had that luxury. "My Lord Emperor," Melles said patiently. "It seems to me that you have been insufficiently acquainted with the desires and needs of the common man."

They compare me to a spider in its web, Melles thought dispassionately, as he watched the old man glare at him over the expanse of a highly-polished black marble table. They should see him when he is not playing his role. He looks like an ancient turtle deciding whether or not to stick his nose a fraction more outside his shell.

Inside the sheltering back and arms of the Emperor's thronelike chair, that was precisely what Charliss resembled. And, like the turtle, Melles suspected that the Emperor really did want to pull himself back into his shell entirely.

He did not seem disposed to learn, or deal with, the basic changes in the Empire, and that fit with Melles' plans. So what I need to do is to persuade him that not only is that a good idea for him, but also that he can trust power in my hands. Melles already had a great deal of power; he had been in charge of dealing out whatever punishments the Emperor deemed necessary for many years now. Not quite an Executioner, and considerably higher in status than a mere lawkeeper, when something unfortunate occurred to a member of the Court and the Emperor took special notice of it, everyone knew whose hand had been behind seeming accidents or twists of fate. Melles' value to the Emperor lay in making certain that it was impossible to prove anything when such accidents occurred.

The "accidents" weren't always supposed to be fatal, or at least not fatal to the physical body. Sometimes ruin suited the Emperor better than death, whether it be the ruin of a reputation or of a fortune. A ploy that Melles particularly favored was to contrive romantic liaisons that were entirely disastrous; it was amazing what people would do to prevent their follies from becoming widely known when that folly involved sexual favors, infatuation, or a combination of the two.

"Just what exactly do you mean by that?" the Emperor asked querulously.

Melles spread his hands wide. "I mean, Lord Emperor, that the common man is an extremely simple creature. You are thinking of him now in terms of the mob, which is a being with many arms and legs and no head, and as a consequence behaves in ways no rational man can predict. I am thinking of him as he is before he devolves to that mindless, intractable state." He tilted his head to one side; that had been a much longer speech than he usually gave to the Emperor, and he had learned to make certain that the Emperor always had openings in which to insert his own comments.

"So what is the so-called common man, when he isn't in a mob?" the Emperor mocked.

Melles was not about to let his own mask of serenity slip. Such mockery was as much a test as Tremane's assignment had been.

And I am not likely to be lulled by the illusion that I am the Emperor's only executioner. If he perceives me as a failure, I will not live long enough to rebel.

He inclined his head a little; not quite a bow, but enough to acknowledge his subservience even as he "corrected" the Emperor's ignorance. "As I said, Serenity, he is simple. What he needs—desires—those things are just as simple. First of all, he wants the roof over his head to be sound and the food on his plate to be abundant. He wants that food to arrive every day. He wants to be left alone to pursue his work and the pleasures of his bed, home, and table. If you give him these things, he is not inclined to argue overmuch about the means required to deliver them. If he is deprived of them, he is likely to welcome whatever measures are taken to restore them." He raised a single finger to emphasize his next point. "Most, if not all, of your common citizens have been so deprived, and see only a steady decline in the quality of their lives, but if measures could be taken that will restore many of their comforts, those things they consider so important to their lives...."

"I see your point," the Emperor replied, with no more mockery in his voice. He sat in silence, only the movement of his eyes betraying his alertness. He could have been a grotesque statue, if not for those glittering eyes. The Emperor did not fidget, did not visibly shift his weight in his chair, or perform any of the other tiny, unconscious movements of lesser beings. Partly it was a matter of training, for such utter stillness enhanced his image of supernatural power; partly, or so Melles suspected, it was simple good sense, to conserve his waning energy and resources.

Finally, the Emperor spoke, his voice low, deep, and grating. "You want me to give you the authority to order whatsoever you think is necessary to restore order at the level of the streets."

Melles nodded, very slowly, as those powerful eyes, blazing with the deadly life of a finely-honed blade, pinned him to his seat. He could not, dared not, return that glare. He was not here to challenge the Emperor, he was here to get the old man to share out some of his power. But he also wouldn't get anywhere if he didn't admit what he wanted. It was an interesting observation by one of his tutors that there were only three classes of people who could afford to speak the unvarnished truth—the very bottom, the very topmost, and children. The lowest classes could afford it because they had nothing to lose, the highest because there was no one who could call them to account for it, and children because they held no power and hence were no threat. Melles had never forgotten that observation, nor did he forget the implications of it. The Emperor could speak pure truth; Melles could not. When the Emperor asked a direct question, Melles had better be careful how much of the truth he told.

But there was another factor here. At the best of times, when the Emperor had been in his prime, he hadn't had time enough for everything. No great ruler did; that was why they had underlings and delegated their authority to those they thought could be trusted with it. Now, the Emperor was old, his powers waning, and he had the very personal and pressing matter of preserving what was left of his life to concentrate on.

The real question, the one Melles had no answer to as yet, was just how close to the end the Emperor was. That would tell him how reluctant Charliss would be to give up power to his Heir. Would he clutch his powers and possessions to him, or release them to clutch at life itself?

Those sharp, chill eyes measured him, and missed nothing in the process. "Very well." The voice was as cold as the eyes. "Have the orders written, and I will sign and seal them, granting you authority over city guards, militias, and authorizing you to make use of the Army in quelling local disturbances. That will be enough to see if you have the insight into the common man that you claim." A thin, humorless smile stretched the Emperor's lips. "If you succeed, I shall consider granting you more."

He waved a hand at the Emperor, in mute disavowal of wanting any other powers. "That will be sufficient, my Lord Emperor, I assure you. I wish only to restore order; without order, these seeds of chaos will spread to engulf us all."

Charliss only made a wheezing grunt full of cynical amusement. "I doubt that you intend to limit your grasp. But this is all you will get for the present. Go to the clerks and draw up the orders."

That was clear dismissal, and he took it as such. He stood, bowed with careful exactitude, and walked backward until he reached the door. The Emperor's eyes were on Melles every step of the way, and the slight smile on the Emperor's lips would have chilled the blood of a lesser man.

He reached behind him and opened the door without looking at it, backed through it, and closed it without taking his eyes off the Emperor. As the door closed, the Imperial eyes were still fixed on him, still measuring, still watching him for a hint of insubordination.

As the door shut with a decisive click, Melles let out his breath, slowly. That went better than I had any reason to hope. He's still sane; if he stays that way, I can handle him. He turned and stalked silently down the cold gray marble hallway with its high ceilings and austere decorations of captured weaponry from ages and wars long past. Like the room he had just left, the hallway was chilly enough to make him wish he had worn heavier clothing. Ostensibly, it was due to a failure in the enchantments of heating, but in fact it was deliberate, to discourage loitering. The hallway was meant to impress one who walked it with his own insignificance, and its acoustics underscored the message well.

Here, so near to the highest seats of Imperial government, the Audience Chamber, the Council Chamber, and the great Court Hall, one necessary adjunct to so much power was a highly-trained cadre of Imperial clerks to make decisions into orders. Nothing could function without written orders. Articles, commands, and doctrine, no matter how seemingly small, had no official life until they were quantified as documents. These pieces of paper were so vital to the working of the Empire, they were like water, food, or air to a soldier, and an official document would carry more power in its words than any courtier posturing and spouting similar verbiage.

And of course, there was such a group of vital clerks, a small army of them, ensconced in the one comfortable chamber on this floor, between the Court Hall and the Council Chamber.

An efficient Empire was one dependent on (though not run by) clerks, though they might not know it; their masters did, and always had, and took care to ensure the comfort of these all-important workers in the hive of Imperial rule. Large windows, screened against insects, let in cooling breezes during the heat of summer. And although the heating-spells had failed elsewhere in Crag Castle—legitimately—measures had always been in place in case of such a failure in the Clerks' Chamber. There were three great fireplaces on the wall shared with the Council Chamber, and two more on the one shared by the Court Hall, all of them burning merrily. Charcoal footwarmers sat under desks, and those all-important fingers kept warm and supple with metal handwarmers on each desk. Each clerk had his own oil lamp to read and write by, and there were pages assigned to this room only, to bring food and drink whenever called for.

Some—always among the "new" nobility who were not yet acquainted with the way things worked—grumbled at this treatment of "mere" clerks. What they were not aware of was that these clerks weren't "mere" anything, and most of them were higher in rank than the grumblers. Here the offspring of the noblest families in the Empire paid their service, even those intended eventually for the Army. They were accustomed to preferential and comfortable treatment, but that did not mean they did not earn it by their labors. There was never an hour when there were not at least six clerks on duty here, and there were twenty between dawn and dusk. Only the most skilled and most discreet served here, and their ability to remain closemouthed about what passed over their desks was legendary.

To open the heavily-guarded door and enter this haven of heat and light was a decided relief; Melles felt tight muscles relaxing under the influence of the gentle warmth. It was still early enough in the day that all twenty clerks were in attendance; Melles scanned the rows of desks, and went straight to the first unoccupied clerk he saw.

The young man he chose sat, like all the rest, at a large wooden desk with everything he required arranged neatly on top of it. A stack of rough draft paper, a smaller stack of Imperial Vellum, inkpots containing red and black ink, blotting paper, blotting sand, glass pens, and his handwarmer were all arranged in a pattern he found personally the most efficient. Off to one side was the book he had been reading, which he had immediately laid aside when Melles neared him. The only sign of individuality was a small egg-shaped carving of white jade in a motif of entwining fish.

The clerk himself was nondescript, unmemorable, as all of them were. They were taught how to be forgettable and self-effacing before they came to this duty. Here, they were a pair of hands and a brain full of specific skills, interchangeable with every other clerk in the room. Melles alone among his acquaintances had never taken a turn in this room, but that was because he had been serving Empire and Emperor by learning another set of skills entirely.

While the clerk made rapid notes, he dictated the orders; the clerk first made a rough copy, checking it word for word with him, then from the corrected rough, made a final copy on Imperial Vellum incorporating all the changes. Melles was being very careful in how he phrased these orders, giving himself precisely the amount of authority that the Emperor had specified and no more. Three more clerks were summoned to make copies at this point, for a total of five copies in all.

As yet, obviously, the orders were nothing more than paper. When he had finished, the clerk summoned a page from the group waiting and chattering on a bench beside the fire and sent him to the Emperor with the finished documents. The page would not walk down the corridor that Melles had just left; he would use a special passage between this room and the Emperor's chambers reserved only for the pages, so that he could not be stopped and questioned or detained.

Melles did not go with him; he was prohibited from doing so, nor would the Emperor's guards permit him to approach with documents to be signed in hand. This was to prevent him from somehow coercing the Emperor into signing and sealing them, or being tricked into doing so before he had read them. All these convoluted customs had their reasons.

At length, the page returned, and the glitter of the Imperial Seal on the uppermost document told Melles that all had gone well; the orders were approved with no changes. Had there been changes, the page would have returned with one copy, not five, which would have had the Emperor's revisions written on it. The rest, one of the Emperor's guards would have burned on the spot, so that the Seal could not have been counterfeited on them.

Melles accepted his copies with a bow of thanks, and left the room. The chill of the hallway struck him with a shock, despite being prepared for it, but he didn't hesitate for even a moment. Now his first priority was to get one copy of the orders into the hands of the Commander of the Imperial Army. The cooperation of the Army was needed before he attempted any of his ambitious plans.

He had been careful to phrase his orders in such a way that the Commander's authority was not being subsumed by his own. The last thing he wanted was to make an antagonist out of General Thayer. The General made a very bad enemy, one who never forgot and never forgave. The orders as he had dictated them gave him the authority to coopt regimental groups or smaller, depending on need, but only if they were not currently deployed on some other duty. If I can't quell a riot with less than a regiment, I won't quell it with anything larger. That's not a threat to Thayer, and it means I won't be countermanding any of his standing orders to the Army as a whole.

With luck, he wouldn't need to use Imperial soldiers very often, but luck had not been with anyone of late. He already knew that he would have to disperse at least one riot in each City by giving the soldiers orders to kill. It would be the first time in centuries that Imperial soldiers had been used against civilians, and it would come as a tremendous shock. He hoped that the shock would be great enough that he would not need to repeat the lesson. The loss of civilians meant loss of taxpaying workers, and at this point the Empire could not afford to lose much in the way of taxes.

The Imperial Commander had quarters here in Crag Castle, as every Emperor since the Third had preferred to have the Commander of his Armies where he could keep a watchful eye on him. The Third Emperor had originally been the Imperial Commander, and he had not approved of the Second Emperor's choice of Heir. He had taken matters into his own hands the moment that the Second Emperor was dead, and had decided not to give his own Imperial Commander the kind of opportunity that he had taken advantage of. The rest had followed his wise example.

As Melles moved down various corridors and staircases, he passed through narrow zones of warm air alternating with much more extensive zones of chill to positively frigid air. Since the denizens of Crag Castle were now relying on fireplaces and other primitive providers of warmth, heating was unreliable and often unpredictable. There would be illness in the Castle before the year turned to spring; illnesses of the kind more often associated with poorer folk.

The times are... interesting. And likely to become more so before the end.

The corridors themselves never varied in decor, only in size and height; they continued to be built of the same gray marble, and continued to feature only captured weaponry as decoration. Once Melles left the area of the Emperor's Quarters and the official chambers of government, the hallways he traversed became much narrower, and the ceilings dropped to a normal level, but that was the only way to tell that he was not within the quarters of the Emperor himself.

The Imperial Commander was one of the highest-ranking officials in the Council, so his chambers were correspondingly nearer to the Imperial Chambers. Only those of the Heir—which Melles' servants were currently engaged in arranging to suit him—were nearer. The Commander's personal bodyguards stood at attention to either side of the door, showing that the, great man himself was inside, as Melles had expected. Melles would shortly have a pair of those guards outside of his own chambers, now that he was the designated Heir. They were not just to protect the life of those they were assigned to, they were meant as protection for the Emperor. The Imperial Guards were an elite group, trained and spell-bound to the service of the Emperor. No force on earth could turn them against Charliss, and if either the Heir or the Imperial Commander proved troublesome, well... only the details of burial would prove troublesome once their guards were finished with them. It was possible to break the spells sealing them to the Emperor, and it was possible that the Storms themselves had already done so. The only way to be sure would be to approach them on the question of eliminating the Emperor, and if the spells were intact, that could be a fatal mistake.

Tremane had managed to leave his pair of Imperial Guards behind him when he went off to command the conquest of Hardorn, probably because the Emperor had not expected trouble from him away from Crag Castle. Perhaps, if Charliss had insisted that Tremane take along his watchdogs, things might have turned out differently.

Or perhaps not, except that the Guards would have solved our problem by dispatching Tremane for us, and I would still be Heir. There would still be mage-storms to contend with, the Empire would still be falling to pieces, and all else would be following much the same paths. The only change would be that they would have one less danger to worry about—Melles knew, as no one else in the Court did, that it was by no means certain that Tremane had allied himself with Valdemar. In point of fact, he hoped fervently that this was not the case. These mage-storms were bad enough, random and untargeted as they seemed to be; if the mages of Valdemar had at their disposal an expert, one who knew everything there was of any importance about the Empire, what would happen then? What if the Storms could be targeted accurately, to cause the most disruption and damage? If Tremane really were to ally himself with Valdemar, that might be what they would have to deal with.

As for what such a revelation would do to the Emperor—

When he was fit and not beset by so many problems, he would simply have been angry, gotten over it, and would dismiss his anger until someone brought him Tremane's head. Now, I cannot be sure, because it is possible that he, like the Empire, is disintegrating, and his sanity will crumble along with his physical body.

He nodded to the two guards, who saluted and stepped aside for him as he displayed the Imperial Seal on the documents he carried. He knocked once on the door, then opened it and stepped inside.

He entered an anteroom, lushly carpeted, with battle-banners on all of the walls, but holding only a monumental desk, three comfortable chairs, and a single servant dressed in a compromise between military uniform and private livery—who was obviously one of Thayer's secretaries.

"I have Imperial orders for the Commander," he told the bland individual behind the desk. "And if the Commander has time for me, I should like to discuss them with him."

Conciliate, be polite and humble. It costs nothing, and keeps the peace.

The secretary immediately rose to his feet, and held out his hand for the orders. "I will deliver the orders to him directly, High Lord Heir," he said smoothly. "Please take a seat. I believe I can assure you that the Commander will always have time to discuss matters of the Empire with you, for he left standing orders with me to admit you to his presence regardless of other circumstances."

As Melles suppressed his surprise, the secretary took the paper from his hand and exited quickly through the doorway behind his desk. Melles took a seat, examining the fingernails of his right hand minutely as a cover for his thoughts. He had been aware since he became a member of the Council that Thayer was an astute politician, but he had not known how astute. Most of the other advisers were still scrambling to decide how to handle Melles now that he was officially the Heir. That Thayer had left standing orders with his underlings to admit Melles at any and all times was an interesting development, and Melles wondered if it meant that the Commander was prepared to cooperate with the new Heir on all levels. If so, that would make Melles' tasks incalculably easier.

To have the Commander of the Imperial Army in my pocket... half the power of the Empire will be divided between us. And the rest, well, that can wait.

The secretary returned before Melles needed to find some other object to examine. "Please follow me, Great Lord," the young man said as he bowed deeply. "The Lord Commander is eager to speak with you without delay."

Melles rose to his feet and followed the secretary into the next room of the suite, this one very similar to the antechamber. The Commander had excellent taste; he had carpeted over most of the floor with one of the rich, plush rugs of the Biijal tribes of the Eastern Islands, some of the more attractive captured battle-banners hung on the walls, and there was a good fire going in the fireplace. Like the antechamber, this room held little in the way of furniture, just another monumental desk, several comfortable chairs, and two smaller tables. Oil lamps served for illumination in place of the mage-lights that would ordinarily have been here; with darkness falling, these had been lit and burned brightly.

General Thayer was waiting, the Imperial Orders in his hand, standing beside his desk rather than sitting behind it. In the silent protocols of the Empire, he was receiving Melles as an equal rather than Melles arriving as a supplicant. This was another good sign; Thayer was not going to challenge his authority at all.

The General could have taken his place in the ranks of his own forces; though his hair was as gray as granite, his body was as hard and tough as that stone. The very few fools who had challenged Thayer to single combat over one pretext or another had not survived the experience. Enemies and friends alike compared him to a wolf—enemies compared him to a ravening, insatiable hunter, friends to the powerful pack leader. Gray as a wolf he was, and his teeth and wits were just as keen.

That sharply chiseled face wore a friendly, welcoming expression today, however, and although Melles knew the General to be an astute politician, he also knew that Thayer was no good at all at hiding his feelings. As surely as his mind was a great asset, his face was a great handicap in the game of politics. To counter that handicap, Thayer made every attempt to play the game in writing and appeared in person only when policy permitted truth.

The General extended his free hand toward Melles with a smile as the secretary bowed himself out, and Melles took his hand with an answering smile.

"By the Hundred Little Gods, I was hoping you'd come to me first before any of the rest!" Thayer grated. A hilt-thrust to his throat as a young man had left him with a permanently marred voice. "Congratulations, Melles. The Emperor finally made a good choice. Tremane was a little too popular with his own men to make me entirely easy in my mind about him."

"Whereas I am so equally unpopular with everyone that you find me more acceptable as Heir?" Melles raised one eyebrow delicately, and Thayer barked a laugh.

"Let's just say that when the Commander discovers that one of his generals is popular, it makes him wonder why that general is cultivating popularity." Thayer bared his teeth in a smile as Melles nodded his understanding. "Sometimes it happens that popularity is an accident, but more often than not it's been deliberately sought. You, however—"

"I, who am known as 'Charliss' Executioner' need not trouble himself about such trifles as popularity." Melles softened the comment with a wry smile. "I would rather have respect than popularity."

Thayer answered that sally with a lifted brow of his own. "In that, as in other things, we are like-minded. The Emperor, may he reign long, is not the only one who needs to worry about underlings with ambition, and I am glad enough to see Tremane eliminated. So, about these orders—your idea?"

Melles nodded, carefully gauging Thayer's reactions before saying anything. He need not have been concerned; it was clear that Thayer could not have been more pleased had he dictated the orders himself.

"Damned good idea! Come sit down so we can talk about this in detail." The General waved him to one of the chairs beside the fireplace, and took another, tossing the orders onto the desktop but making no move to place himself behind the desk. Melles took his seat, and the General moved his own chair nearer to that of the Heir before sitting in it. "Damned good idea!" he repeated. "Declare martial law, and you'll have the cits up in arms and starting a revolt in the streets, but bring in the Army without actually calling it martial law, and they'll fall in line without a whimper if you can restore order." He coughed. "Give them back their easy lives, and they'll call you a god and not care how you managed it."

"My idea is to use the smallest number of soldiers that I can to crush disturbances absolutely," Melles said cautiously. "I don't want people to begin muttering that we've called out the Army on them; I believe that is one thing the citizens of the Empire won't tolerate. If you'll look at those orders, you'll see I've been given direct command of city guards, constables, and militia. The way I see it, if I use those forces in the front ranks, and only use the Army regulars to back them up and add strength to their line, I'll get the effect that I want without it looking as if the Army is taking over."

"Good. Sound strategy," Thayer confirmed. "Out in the provinces they expect the Army to put down trouble, but the cits think they're above all that. Put down the first riots efficiently, kill a few of the worst troublemakers, and I don't think you'll have any trouble reestablishing order. I was hoping someone would figure out that we're in for a spot of domestic trouble and would plan on dealing with it."

And of course he didn't dare suggest it himself. Charliss would see that as a direct threat to his own authority, and I would have been asked to find General Thayer a—retirement. Thayer knows it, too. He nodded, and leaned back in his chair, feeling much more confident with Thayer as an open ally. "It's not common knowledge, but there have already been small disturbances, and I expect larger ones as food runs short and hardships build up," he said easily. "If we're ready—and ruthless in suppressing the troubles to come—I think the citizens will accept what we do as a necessary evil."

"Yes, as we've said, find a way to get them their meals and peace and the cits will accept anything short of burning down the city," Thayer retorted with contempt. "Now, how exactly do you want me to help? You want a special regiment detached to go wherever it's needed, or—" Thayer paused, looking eager, but a bit reluctant to put forth his own ideas. "Well, I'm a military man, I don't have any experience in riot control, but—

"You have an idea of your own," Melles said, leaning forward with interest. "Please. I'd like to hear it."

"We've still got limited communication mage-to-mage with all the military bases, and you know there's at least one near every large city," Thayer told him. "Now, if I were to move a certain number of men, a company, say, into each city—if you were to get the militias and city guards and so on organized in the way you want beforehand—well, as soon as a riot started, your city militia would naturally go take care of it, and just as naturally the captain of the company would offer his help. Your militia captain would accept it, and why not, they're both in military brotherhoods, as it were. With the backing of the Army, I don't see any reason why we couldn't squash any riot. And technically, since I doubt every hothead in every city would take it into his head to riot on the same day, you wouldn't be exceeding the number of men you asked for." He grinned slyly. "You see, they'd only be under your command for the duration of the riot; after that, they'd come back under my authority."

Melles allowed himself a dry chuckle. General Thayer was obviously a past master at the fine art of manipulating loopholes, and his strategy was an application of the very orders that he had written that he himself had not considered.

But then, I didn't have any reason to suspect that Thayer would make quite such an eager ally.

"That, General, is a brilliant plan; quite perfect for all our purposes," he replied, allowing approval to creep into his voice. The General smiled, a smile with just as much steel in it as warmth.

"Good. We're agreed on it, then." Thayer nodded decisively. "Now, in return, I'd appreciate it if you could do something about some domestic orders for me—not exactly requisitions, more like assignments. It all still comes under the heading of restoring domestic order."

"I'll do what I can." Melles had expected this; trading favor for favor was the accepted way of doing business in Imperial politics. He wouldn't commit himself until he'd heard precisely what Thayer had in mind, but Thayer knew that already.

"Put the Army in charge of all intercity transportation of supplies." Thayer looked him straight in the eyes. "As it is, stuff's being moved inefficiently, what gets moved is random, and carters are getting fat no matter what. The Army's suffering, because we're having to pay through the nose, just like the cits are. Conscript the carters, take over the Cartage Guild, make 'em subject to Army discipline, and we'll cure what's causing some of your riots in short order. Every dog in the Empire knows what's going on, and they'll be happy to see the Cartage Guild get what's coming to them. The cits are as tired of the profiteering as I am."

And you and your officers will get fat on the profits, instead of the Cartage Guild. Melles saw right through that one, but Thayer was right about several things. Transportation was a hit-or-miss matter right now, and the profits that the carters were making were obscene. Putting the Army in charge would reduce profiteering to an acceptable level, and get transportation organized. And there had been unrest over the profiteering; at least one of the riots had destroyed a Cartage Guildhall and the buildings near it.

No, there will be no weeping if I conscript the carters, their beasts, and their vehicles.

The question was, could he get away with that assignment, as an interpretation of the orders that Charliss had just signed?

He unrolled one of his own copies and scanned it quickly, then looked up into Thayer's flat brown eyes. "I think this particular set of commands gives me that authority," he said, knowing that the Emperor wouldn't care so long as he could keep anyone from lodging complaints against it. And since Thayer was going to have pressing reasons to prevent complaints.... "When I send out copies of the original orders, I'll see to it that this particular amendment is added."

Thayer smiled with satisfaction. "I'll have my mages get to work," he promised. "By tomorrow night, there'll be companies picked; by the next day I'll have them moving into barracks in the cities. Don't worry; I'll send orders to select steady men, veterans, men who won't panic, won't shoot unless they're ordered, and won't exceed their orders. I'll send captains who have every reason to keep peace, steady men, not sadists who enjoy breaking heads."

Army efficiency, he thought enviously. It's a beautiful thing to see working. "My orders will have to travel by signal and sometimes courier, but they'll get to most of the Empire in a fortnight," he replied, and stood up. "It will be a pleasure working with you, Lord Commander," he finished, holding out his hand as the General stood up.

Thayer took it in another firm handclasp. "An equal pleasure here," he said. "And a damned sight better than working with one of the infernal groat-counters, let me tell you!" He followed at Melles' elbow, quite pleased to accompany his visitor to the door.

Melles knew what he meant; several of the possible candidates for Heir were men less of vision than of caution. Few of them would have the imagination to foresee the riots he knew were bound to come, much less to plan how to quell them. "Just remember—we want our actions to be as unobtrusive as possible—so that the citizens welcome the sight of soldiers in the streets rather than fearing it."

Thayer opened the door to the antechamber for him, nodding vigorously. "Exactly. I'll draw up a set of riot orders for you; you look them over and tell me what you want changed." He waved Melles through. "Grevas, see the Lord Heir out, would you? Lord Melles, I can't thank you enough for coming here yourself."

"Think nothing of it; I am glad that we could reach an understanding so quickly." Melles passed into the antechamber where the secretary received him with a deep bow of respect, then hurried to open the door for him. He waved his thanks at the underling, and entered the cold hallway feeling as if he had done a good day's work indeed.

Now, what else? Orders to requisition food if it's necessary, and it will be. And orders to requisition extra beasts and vehicles from the Estates, placing them in the hands of the Army. Have to specify rules about requisitions; taking a farmer's only cart and horse is only going to be counterproductive. Put one of my secretaries on it. Mertun—he was a farmer's son. That would be enough for now; too many orders all at once, and it would cause more unease and unrest than already existed.

And I need to consolidate my personal position. That, fortunately, was mostly a matter of reinforcing his own standing orders to his special operatives. Those operatives would act as needed, and bring him the information he required. And insofar as power in the Council of Advisers and the Court went—well, most mouths would smile and utter compliments, and he would accept them. Action would speak the real truths, and his operatives would ferret out what those same mouths said in private.

There was a single exception to all of that. If the Army could manage to keep their lines of communication open, it meant that they were able to get some magics to work. Probably those of short duration; and that may be the secret. That, and a great deal of power forcing the magics through. I have power, and I have more than one mage in my own pay. I simply hadn't thought to apply great power to small goals, but maybe those goals are not so small after all, now.

He hurried down the corridor to his new quarters, only a short distance from the General's, and found his own Imperial bodyguards waiting at the door for him. They opened the door for him with great ceremony, and he was greeted on the other side by his own servants, who surrounded him and began fussing over him immediately with great ceremony and a little fear.

Impatiently, he waved most of them away. His new quarters were fundamentally identical to his old, except that the rooms were a bit larger, the furnishings (those that were not his personal gear) more luxurious, and the suite itself was situated better with regard to conveniences. In the time he'd spent conferring with the Emperor and General Thayer, his servants had removed all signs of the former occupant, and had made it seem as if he had always lived here. His own carpets were on the floor, his tapestries and maps on the walls, his books in the cases and on the tables. He went straight to his desk to draft the orders—or rather, elaborations—that were to be appended to the Imperial Orders he had with him. When he had finished, he handed the rough drafts to his own secretary—along with the four copies of the Imperial Orders he still retained.

"Take care of these—and have Mertun specify under what conditions a man's beast and vehicle are to be exempt from requisition," he ordered. His secretary bowed and took the papers out. Only then did he permit himself to relax, putting himself into the care of his valet. His secretary would see that three sets of the Orders got into the hands of the Imperial Clerks for distribution and dissemination. One set would remain here, for use as a reference.

He walked into his private chambers at the direction of his valet; with his own furniture here, in the same positions as in his old rooms, he could almost convince himself that nothing had changed.

Almost. It's begun. I have started the avalanche; there will be no stopping it now. He allowed his valet to extract him from his stiff coat of heavy, embroidered satin and help him into a much more comfortable robe. Within a short period of time he was settled in a chair beside a fireplace, with food and drink and a book on the table at his right hand.

He stared into the flames, amused and bemused by everything that had happened today. It had certainly been an eventful day, and one he would remember for a long time.

Nevertheless, his day was not yet over. He rang for his valet, and when the man appeared, murmured a certain phrase that meant his operatives were to be contacted and called in, one at a time. My agents will have to watch for some new things now, as well as the old. My mages—well, if the Army can accomplish communicative magics, perhaps there are a few things that we can accomplish, too.

It occurred to him that although vengeance on his old enemy Tremane was probably out of the question, at least he ought to be sure just exactly what Tremane was up to. Scrying was another magic of limited scope and duration, and it was just possible that enough could be learned by means of scrying to warn him if Tremane was actually a danger to the Empire.

He settled back, sipped hot spiced wine thoughtfully, and waited for the first of his spies to appear. No, much as he would like to, he could not dispose of that annoying Tremane—but he could not ignore the man either.

And in the kind of war he waged, the best and most reliable weapon was knowledge.

It was time to wield that particular weapon, and with more finesse and care than he had ever exercised before.

Four

The cavernous interior of Urtho's Tower was remarkably quiet with the gryphons gone. An'desha hadn't quite realized until now how much sound the gryphons produced—like the constant click of talons on stone, the windlike bellows—sound of their breathing and the rustle of feathers. He'd gotten used to those whispers of sound, and without them, his own voice seemed unnaturally loud despite the sussuration of other activity.

"Look here, it's really quite logical," An'desha said, with one finger under the line of characters—the same words, written in three different languages. Karal peered at them, his forehead creasing with concentration. "This is the Hawkbrother, this is the Shin'a'in, and you can see how similar—"

A muffled thud interrupted him, followed by the sound of alarmed and complaining voices. Startled, he looked up, past Karal and into the central room of the Tower.

He knew those voices, although he had not expected to hear them today. He got up and moved to the doorway, just to see if he was somehow mistaken.

He wasn't. The aged Imperial mage Sejanes, in his robes of oddly military cut, was a strange contrast to Master Artificer Levy in his practical, yet luxurious, black silk and leather. Both of them, however, looked pale and ill and much the worse for their travel. Walking ahead of them was Altra.

"By the Hundred Little Gods!" said Sejanes, every hair on his gray head standing straight out. "If I never have to travel this way again, it will be too soon!"

Master Levy swallowed, looking to An'desha as if he were fighting to keep his stomach from revolting. His face had a greenish tint, and the knuckles of his clenched fists were white. "I... quite agree with you, Sejanes," he said in a strangled voice. "I believe that, given the option, I will walk home."

Altra looked at both of them with unconcealed contempt, stalking off into Karal's side room to bonelessly flop down onto the foot of Karal's pallet. An'desha followed him. An'desha didn't "hear" the Firecat say anything, but Karal pulled his mostly-untouched bowl of stew over to the cat, who gratefully inhaled it as if he hadn't eaten in weeks.

Meanwhile, Firesong, Lo'isha, Silverfox, and two of the Shin'a'in hurried over to greet the aged mage and younger Master Artificer. There wasn't much in the way of furniture here, but Silverfox brought both of them folding stools to sit on, and they sagged down onto that support with evident gratitude. An'desha didn't blame either of the newcomers for their reactions; he knew from personal experience that they were not exaggerating their exhaustion and illness.

An'desha had traveled once in the care of Altra the Firecat, in the creature's bizarre distance-devouring method of transportation called "Jumping," and he would not particularly care to experience it again. The Firecats were somehow able to cross great distances in the blink of an eye, and could take with them whatever or whoever was touching them. The experience was a gut-wrenching one, similar to a Gate-crossing, but repeated over and over with each Jump. The closer together the Jumps were, the worse the effect was. The amount of cumulative effect varied with each person, but from the look of these two, Altra hadn't paused much between Jumps and this latest journey had been quite a rough ride for them.

An'desha watched for a moment, but Firesong, Silverfox, and the rest seemed to have the situation well in hand. Sejanes clearly needed to go lie down, and Master Levy to sit down and have something to settle his stomach. After a brief rest, both of them were taken into the vacant side chamber that had earlier served as the gryphons' nest. Karal, meanwhile, was fussing over Altra, who, for the first time in An'desha's experience, was looking rather shopworn. Evidently the trip hadn't been easy on him either.

He remembered what Altra had said about the fact that even Jumping had become much more difficult. "Are you feeling all right?" he asked the cat, as Karal hovered over him anxiously.

:I have felt better,: the Firecat replied dryly. :But I believe that with a short rest and food, I shall be fine. The currents in the energy-fields are vicious. It has become very dangerous to Jump even a tenth of my usual distances. I do think that from here on in I, too, would prefer to walk where I need to go, given the choice.:

The clacking of hooves on the floor signaled the arrival of the Companion Florian. :Oh, don't be ridiculous, Altra,: the Companion said mockingly. :Of course you won't have to walk. You'll convince one of us to carry you.:

Altra ignored him, pretending to concentrate on the vital task of licking the bowl clean. That didn't take too long, and as soon as the last hint of gravy was gone, he curled up in such a way that he wouldn't be in the way of Karal's feet if the young Karsite needed to rest. :I'm going to sleep now,: the Firecat said with great dignity, and he closed his eyes firmly, still ignoring Florian's jibe.

Florian made a whickering sound that was so like a chuckle that there was no doubt in An'desha's mind what the Companion was thinking. "Oh, leave him alone, Florian," he told the Companion. "At least for now. You can't deny that he has done more than his share for some time to come. If Gating is dangerous, how could Jumping be less than hazardous?"

:True enough,: Florian replied equitably. :You are correct, An'desha, and I am at fault here. Altra has served heroically, and I should not have teased him, especially not when he is as exhausted as his passengers. I beg your pardon, cat.:

:And I grant it, horse,: came from the seemingly-sleeping Firecat.

Florian stepped over and touched his nose to the Firecat's fur in a conciliatory gesture, then backed off to the chamber entrance. He stood with one eye cast toward the main chamber, and the other watching over Altra and his friends, before finally quietly clopping off.

"Well. We have everyone we need," An'desha said to Karal, "Except perhaps that Kaled'a'in scholar we have been promised. We can certainly resume investigating the other devices we found."

"I keep thinking that there are more rooms and chambers we haven't found yet," Karal replied, lying back down on his pallet, taking care to not to disturb Altra.

"There probably are," An'desha told him. "We've found signs of at least four more places where there might be storage chambers or even a passage to a lower level. The problem is that we haven't been able to get them open. Perhaps Sejanes or Master Levy will be able to help there." He smiled at his friend. "To tell you the truth, I suspect it will be Master Levy; I have the feeling that the tricks to getting these hatches open are purely mechanical."

Karal smiled back. "I think you may be right. That would fit well enough with what Treyvan was able to tell me about the Mage of Silence. It would be like him to put a mechanical catch in a place of magic, knowing that anyone who came here intending mischief would probably be expecting magic and not be prepared for mechanics."

An'desha chuckled. "And that would certainly put Firesong's nose out of joint. Poor Firesong! At every turn, it seems as if his great powers as an Adept are less and less important!"

Karal nodded and rubbed the back of his neck in thought. "It must be awfully difficult for him to face each day. Just look at what has happened. He went from being the brightest star in the skies to... finding his powers unreliable and lessened, with new methods to do what he used to do coming up every day. Some of them are even contradictory to what he has known as fact all his life."

An'desha frowned and nodded. "Sometimes I feel like I cheated him out of his glory by being who and what I am, but I know that none of us dictated or could have predicted the way things would unfold. I owe him my life, by the Star-Eyed's grace, and I am grateful to him, but I wish that he could feel the happiness now that he used to enjoy in the Vales. And as for things being contradictory—you've been experiencing much of that yourself, spiritually. So have we all, I think." He paused, fingers tented as he carefully considered his next words. "Still—Master Levy says that all things in our world, no matter how illogical they may seem, are still consistent under unseen laws. The spirits I have spoken with on the Moonpaths have implied much the same—that magic in all its forms works under those laws as surely as rain, wind, and beasts do. Perhaps Firesong, and all of us, are learning new aspects of the laws we have been subject to all our lives."

"With Master Levy here to confound us all with his teachings on universal laws, you'll need me for a secretary again," Karal said as he smoothed down his warm robes, brightening considerably. "I'll be glad to be useful again."

An'desha nodded with sympathy; he knew how idleness, even enforced, had fretted his friend, and he would also be glad to see Karal feeling as if he were contributing his share. Realistically, Karal was not able to help at all with brute-force physical tasks, but the role of secretary was perfect for him.

He would have said something, but he noticed that Karal seemed very tired, and it occurred to him that the two of them had been working quite steadily on comparing Shin'a'in, Tayledras, and Kaled'a'in writing ever since breakfast. Mental work could be just as exhausting as physical labor, even for those, like Karal, who had a knack for it.

"Why don't you look after Altra for a while," he said, cleverly using the Firecat as an excuse to get Karal to rest. "I'll go see if our hosts want to know anything about Sejanes and Master Levy."

Karal nodded, and caressed Altra with one hand while he closed his eyes. An'desha collected the empty stew bowl and made a mental note to get something more suited to Altra's tastes from the Shin'a'in.

He left Karal beginning to doze, Altra already asleep, and Florian watching over them both, and went out into the main chamber in the center of the Tower. Master Levy already recovered, was examining the floor of that chamber on his hands and knees. He looked up as An'desha entered.

"Has anyone looked at the floor here?" he asked.

"We looked, but we didn't see anything," the Shin'a'in replied." Why? Have you found something?"

"Perhaps." Master Levy got to his feet. "When I was still studying, I used to earn spending money by designing and helping to build hidden doors and chambers for wealthy or eccentric clients. I think there might be something here."

"Huh." An'desha looked closely at the floor, and had to shake his head. "I'll take your word for it. Do you think you can get it open—if there is anything there?"

"Perhaps," Master Levy repeated. "I'll have to examine it later, when I'm not exhausted. This is all sheer nervous energy, you see, plus a rather stupid wish to seem in better physical shape than old Sejanes, and it's all about to run out. I'm going to get a bowl of that stew I smell, and then I am going to sleep for a day."

An'desha laughed, as Master Levy shrugged ruefully and with self-deprecation. As the Master Artificer drifted in the direction of their little charcoal stove and the bubbling stewpot atop it, he started back toward Karal. But halfway there, he turned, a little surprised, as a soft voice hailed him.

It was one of the few black-clad Kal'enedral, and with him was another wearing dark blue. The one in black he knew; Ter'hala, an old man whose blood-feud would technically never be completed, because the one who murdered his oathbrother had been Mornelithe Falconsbane. It was doubly ironic that An'desha and Ter'hala had become friends over the past few days. Ter'hala knew who and what he had been, of course. An'desha, understandably nervous, had asked him why he continued to wear black; Ter'hala had laughed and said that he was used to the color and too old to change.

"Ter'hala!" An'desha greeted him. "Who is your friend?"

The Kal'enedral sketched a salute of greeting. "This is Che'sera, young friend. He wished to meet you."

An'desha bowed slightly. "I am always honored to meet one of the servants of the Wise One," he said politely, though he could not for the life of him imagine what had brought so many of the reclusive "Scrollsworn"—as he called them, to distinguish them from the true Swordsworn—out of Kata'shin'a'in and their stronghold there. "We are all truly grateful for the hospitality and tolerance you have shown to us."

I wonder if the reason is that we've just added two more meddlers to the group, and one of them is a mage from a completely unknown land, he thought, though he kept his thoughts to himself. Not that I blame them. We're the interlopers here; the Star-Eyed gave them the keeping of this Tower and its secrets, not us.

Che'sera returned his bow. "I am pleased to meet you, An'desha," he replied, his voice so carefully neutral that An'desha could not read any second meaning into the words. "It is not often that one of the Plains who goes to become a mage ever returns again."

"It is not often that the shamans permit him to return," An'desha replied, as calmly and carefully as he could, although he could in no way match the lack of inflection in Che'sera's voice. "Until only recently, mages have been forbidden the Plains, even those of the People."

"Well, and you can certainly see why," Che'sera countered immediately, gesturing at the Tower remains about them. "This would all have been a great temptation. Can you say, had you become a mage of the Tale'edras, that you would not have been tempted to try to use one of these weapons against the one they called Falconsbane?"

An'desha shuddered. He still had far too many of Falconsbane's memories of the life he had led using An'desha's body for comfort—and behind those memories, marched others, a seemingly endless parade of atrocities stretching back into a dim past as ancient as this Tower.

"I would," he admitted slowly. "I would have been tempted by anything that might have brought the monster down. Anything that would have saved others from the horror he wrought."

Che'sera shrugged. "And yet it took how many of you, working together, to simply use the energy of one of these weapons rather than the weapon itself?"

"And yet you permit us here now." An'desha allowed one eyebrow to rise.

"We do, and that is in part why I wished to speak with you," Che'sera told him. "May we speak privately, you and I, for a little while, Shin'a'in to Shin'a'in?"

Now An'desha was considerably more surprised, and not at all certain what Che'sera had in mind. This was the first time in his reckoning that any of the Shin'a'in here had addressed him in such a fashion; most seemed uncomfortable with the concept of a Shin'a'in who was also a mage, and some seemed of the personal opinion that his half-foreign blood made him more alien than Shin'a'in. "Certainly, if that is what you wish." He nodded toward the sleeping chamber. "My friend Karal is asleep in there; he will not hear us, and if we speak quietly, we will not disturb him. I fear that is the most privacy I can offer, as it is in somewhat short supply here despite the vastness of the place."

Che'sera nodded. "That will do," he said, and gestured to An'desha to lead him onward.

An'desha did so, walking with great care past Karal and Altra, although neither stirred, nor in fact gave any indication that they were alive except for their steady breathing. At the moment he was suffering from mixed feelings; he was both curious and apprehensive to hear what Che'sera wanted to say that required privacy.

He gestured at his own pallet, waiting until Che'sera took a seat at the foot before seating himself.

"So," he said, wondering what he was letting himself in for. "What is it you wish of me, Sworn One?"

When Che'sera left him at last, he sat back against the gently-curving stone wall and simply thought of nothing for a while. He felt as if Che'sera had taken his mind, had turned it upside-down and shaken it, examined it, poked and prodded it, turned it inside out, and then, when he was finished, put it all neatly back in place with the ends tucked in.

He had probably been the most skillful interrogator that An'desha or any of Falconsbane's many incarnations had ever encountered. You know, I suspect that at this point he could predict my reaction to virtually any situation, and do so with more accuracy than I could!

Although his questions had covered virtually every subject, Che'sera seemed particularly interested in the Avatars. That was the one thing that hadn't surprised him, since virtually all of the Sworn had wanted to know about Dawnfire and Tre'valen sooner or later. Some of them here had actually been present when Dawnfire, trapped in the body of her bondbird, had been transformed into an Avatar in the first place. It had occurred to An'desha that as far as he was concerned, such a transformation was a poor substitute for returning Dawnfire to her proper human form. But then again, perhaps that had not been possible; granted, the Star-Eyed had been able to undo most of the changes Falconsbane had run on An'desha's own body, but that was in the nature of restoring something to its rightful state, not changing it into something else altogether.

Perhaps all that She would have been able to manage would have been transformation into a tervardi, one of the bird-people, and that might have been a truly cruel "reward" for her, since the tervardi are frail and not very humanlike. At least this way, she is still fundamentally herself and she is anything but frail.

He also sensed that there were other complications to the story that no one had told him about. And there was, of course, the factor that Dawnfire had been mourned for dead, and her human body buried when the bond to it was snapped by Falconsbane. It didn't necessarily do for a deity to resurrect people; the question would inevitably arise: "Why this one and not my father, mother, sibling, lover." Better, on the whole, not to do any such thing. Look at all the effort that the Companions went to in order to preserve the secret of their own nature, and they weren't even returning as humans!

Just such philosophical questions had arisen in the course of Che'sera's questioning—though on his part, rather than Che'sera's—and the Sworn One had neatly deflected them. Perhaps it had been because Che'sera wanted him to think of possible answers for himself; there had been that kind of feeling as the conversation progressed.

And in all of that, I didn't learn a thing about Che'sera himself. Now that was truly unusual, since Falconsbane had been a rather skilled interrogator and some of that expertise was available to An'desha. Given the proper occasion, that was one of Falconsbane's abilities that An'desha did not mind coopting, but he had not been able to insert so much as a single personal question of his own the entire time the two of them spoke. Che'sera was most unusual, even for the Sworn.

An'desha rubbed his temples, feeling as if he should have a headache after all that Che'sera had put him through, even though he did not.

Activity, that was what was called for. There were dishes to wash, there was clothing to mend, and there were all manner of things to be done. Or perhaps he ought to go look at the food supplies the Shin'a'in had brought, and see if there was something more that could be done with them than the seemingly endless round of soups and stews they had been presented with thus far. He wasn't precisely a grand cook, but he did have experience in dishes that no one else here did.

He rose and went in search of something useful to do.

The clothing and kitchen work had already been taken care of, but as it turned out, there was something new he could concoct in the way of dinner for them all. There was fresh meat, brought in by Shin'a'in hunters; there were beans and a few other winter vegetables such as onions, and there were spices and dried peppers. That particular combination reminded him of a recipe Karal had made up for him once, when they'd been too late to catch dinner with either the Court or the Heraldic students. He diced some of the meat and hot peppers and browned them together, added onions, beans and sweet spice, and set it all to cook slowly. While all of those ingredients had been used before, no one in the group had ever used them in that combination. It would definitely be different from anything the Shin'a'in had been cooking, and that was what he was looking for.

It had taken a long time to dice the meat as finely as the recipe called for, and having his hands busy allowed his mind to rest. His mind wasn't the only thing resting, however, and although Karal was still sleeping, others were awake again. At about the time he finished with his concoction, Master Levy was out in the main room on his hands and knees, looking intently at the floor, and prying at invisible cracks with some very tiny tools he took from a pouch at his belt.

An'desha washed up the utensils he'd used for his preparations, dried his hands, and went out to join him, though no one else seemed at all interested in what he was doing. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked, sitting on his heels just behind the Master Artificer.

"Well, there is something here, all right," Master Levy replied in an absent tone. "This is a movable stone, and I would guess that it drops down and fits into a slot carved into the rock. It may take me a while to figure out the release, though. Tell me something, do you have any idea if this mage thought in patterns, in numbers of things? As in—oh, the Karsites think in terms of one, seven, or eight—if they build a device with a catch, it will either have a single trigger-point or seven. That's because they have a single God, but in the usual representations of Vkandis as the sun rising, there are seven rays coming from it and in the ones of the sun-in-glory there are eight rays. The Rethwellans almost always use three, for the three faces of their Goddess. Most Valdemarans use three or two, three for the same reason as the Rethwellans, or two for the God and Goddess. It's not a conscious thing, it's just the kind of patterns that people establish as very small children."

"You might try four," An'desha said, after a moment of thought. "Urtho shared the Kaled'a'in faith, if he shared anything religious with anyone, and that's the same as the Shin'a'in. Except where it's free-flowing and curvy, there's a great deal of square and diamond symmetry in the decorations around here."

Master Levy grunted what sounded like thanks, and seemed to widen his scope of examination a bit.

Finally he sat back on his haunches, stretched all his fingers and shook his head. "Shall we see if we're supremely lucky and we're not dealing with a random placing?" he asked An'desha, his saturnine face showing rather more humor than An'desha was used to seeing from him. "If your guess is right, I think I've found all four trigger points; if mine is right, this far inside his Tower Urtho would not have bothered to be terribly clever about hiding his additional workrooms and the catches won't be difficult. I don't suppose you've got a clue about an order in which to push four trigger-points, do you?"

"If you're not supposed to push all of them at once, you mean?" An'desha thought again. "East, South, West, and North. That's the order in rituals, with the Maiden being in the East and the Crone in the North."

"That sounds as good a guess as any. Let's see what happens."

Master Levy reached out with one of his tools, but An'desha shot out a hand to stop him. "Wait a minute!" he stammered. "If you do this wrong, is anything likely to—well—go wrong? Will the ceiling fall in and crush us, or poison gas start seeping in here, or something?"

Master Levy paused. "There is that possibility," he began, and laughed at An'desha's expression. "Oh, for Haven's sake, it's not very likely he'd put something like that in the floor now, is it? Where it might be triggered by accident just by people standing on it?"

An'desha flushed, embarrassed. "I suppose not," he replied, letting go of Master Levy's hand.

The Master Artificer continued his interrupted task, depressing a small spot in the stone of the floor. An'desha noted with fascination that it remained depressed so that if one had placed a coin on the spot, it would be flush with the rest of the floor. Master Levy then touched a second, and a third, both of which also remained depressed after he touched them, and although An'desha had not been able to spot the second place, once he had the distance between the first and second, he was able to deduce the locations of the third and fourth spot before Master Levy touched them. An'desha held his breath in anticipation when the Master Artificer pushed on that last place.

Nothing happened for a long moment, and An'desha sighed with disappointment. Master Levy however, had his head cocked to one side, and as An'desha sighed, he stood up, looked fixedly at a place in the pattern of the floor shaped like an octagon, then stamped sharply down on one corner of it with his boot heel.

With a reluctant, grating sound, the stone moved a trifle, dropping down by about the width of a thumb.

Master Levy stamped downward again, and the stone moved a bit more. "It's stuck. Old, you know," he quipped. He continued urging it with carefully-placed blows of his heel as it dropped down about the distance of a man's hand measured from the end of the middle finger to the wrist, then began to slide sideways. Once there was a sliver of a gap between the octagonal stone and the rest of the floor, he got down on hands and knees again, and peered at it.

By now, thanks to the sounds of stamping and the grating of stone-on-stone, he had attracted the attention of everyone in the Tower who was not asleep. "Will you look at that!" Silverfox exclaimed, as the curious gathered around. "We never guessed that was there!"

"I am looking at it. I think I'm going to need something to pry with," Master Levy replied. "The mechanisms are rather stuck, which shouldn't be too surprising considering their age. I'm afraid once I get this open, it's not going to shut again."

"I don't see a problem with that," Firesong said, dropping down on his heels to peer at the stone himself, beside Master Levy, while Silverfox went off to get a pry bar from a Plainsman. "If there's anything down there worth bothering with, we wouldn't want to close it, and if there isn't, we'll clean out the trash and use it for sleeping quarters or something."

Master Levy grunted and nodded his head as he felt along the crack with great care, then put his nose to the crack to sniff at it gingerly. "I don't smell anything that shouldn't be down there," he said after a long moment while he concentrated on the scent with his eyes closed. "And I always did have the best nose in my year-group. When the students were experimenting, my Alchemy Master always used to count on me to know when to evacuate the workroom if something went wrong."

"Comforting, considering there might be a mechanism to release poisons into the room below, if not this one," said Sejanes, coming up to the rest with his hair all rumpled from sleeping. Silverfox arrived at that moment with the pry bar and shook his head at the Imperial mage.

"Not Urtho, and especially not in his own Tower," the kestra'chern said decisively. "He was a compassionate and considerate man, safe and resourceful but not vengeful. He would only create wards to protect things, not to punish. He wouldn't have taken the risk that a curious hertasi or some other innocent might set such a thing loose."

Sejanes looked skeptical, but didn't say anything. Silverfox, however, read the look correctly.

"You're not dealing with the Empire, Sejanes," he said. "You're not dealing with people looking to gain in rank by whatever means it takes. Urtho's personal servants and close friends were loyal enough to die for him—and many did, to his sorrow. Here in the heart of his personal stronghold, he would not have used safeguards that could harm his own people as well as intruders."

Master Levy inserted the tongue of the pry bar in the crack, and pulled.

The stone grated, and moved slightly, then kept on moving for a little after Master Levy stopped pulling. Now the gap was about as wide as a large man's palm.

"Do we want to investigate before we open this any further?" the Artificer asked Silverfox. "I defer to your judgment, since you seem to know more about the master of this place than anyone else here."

Silverfox looked pointedly at An'desha, who shook his head in answer to the silent question. "My knowledge is tainted, since it comes from his enemy," he said at once. "Ma'ar is far more likely to have underestimated a foe he considered sentimental and soft."

"It wouldn't hurt to drop a lantern down on a string," Silverfox said to Master Levy. "Then at least we'll be able to see what we're dealing with. For all we know, this is just a well, and not any kind of a storeroom or workroom."

"A source of water other than melted snow from the surface would be welcome," Lo'isha murmured quietly. Master Levy heard him, and nodded in answer to both statements.

This time it was An'desha's turn to go off and rummage for a lantern and some appropriately strong string. They hadn't needed lanterns since they arrived here, although the Shin'a'in had brought some, just in case the magical lights failed. The magic lamps hanging from the center of the ceiling of each room had been quite enough to serve their needs and showed no signs of being harmed at all by the mage-storms that made magic problematic outside the Tower. An'desha dug one of the lanterns out of a pile of articles no one had found a use for, and got some string from the kitchen area. He filled the lamp with oil, trimmed the wick with thread clippers from a sewing kit, and lit it before bringing it out to the rest.

Master Levy made the handle fast to the string and lowered the lantern down into the cavity while the others crowded around. An'desha couldn't see anything from his vantage, and neither could most of the Shin'a'in.

"Well?" called Che'sera. "What's there?"

"Stairs, mostly," Master Levy replied. "So this isn't a well. I believe I see something like furniture at the bottom, but the light doesn't go very far down."

"It's not dimming in bad air, is it?" An'desha asked anxiously, vague memories of tomb openings intruding from one of Falconsbane's previous lives. "Even if there are no poisons, the air could have gone bad from what's been sealed inside."

"No, it's burning brightly enough. It's just a long way down to the next floor and the light is between me and what's down there," Master Levy replied. "It is an issue of contrast and visual acuity. Well, no help for it. Back to hard labor."

He inserted the tongue of the pry bar and continued to lever the stubborn stone out of the way, while at least a couple of the observers looked at each other, wondering why the Artificer used such flowery terms to say he couldn't see well. Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, the frozen mechanism gave way. The stone slid beneath the floor into hiding, and Master Levy, taken completely off guard, fell over backward, the pry bar dropping out of his hands and clanging end-over-end down the staircase.

Only An'desha remained to assist the winded Artificer to his feet; the rest of the spectators made a rush for the stair with Firesong in the lead. In mere moments they had descended out of sight; then Firesong spoke a single word, light poured up from below, and muffled exclamations were drifting up through the hole in the floor.

"You might say 'thank you!'" Master Levy called after them, and sighed, rubbing his hip where he had landed. "We may as well go find out what they've discovered. I only hope it isn't Urtho's treasury; there isn't a great deal of good that gold and gems would do us in this situation."

"Urtho's treasury would have books, not baubles," An'desha assured him. "But we ought to go down, too, before they all get carried away in their enthusiasm."

Master Levy went with An'desha following him, taking the stone stairs carefully, for they were quite steep. They also went down farther than he expected, for the stone floor of the room above was at least as thick as his hand was long, perhaps a little thicker, which accounted for the fact that it hadn't rung hollow and had sounded like solid stone to their footsteps. It looked as if this room had actually been hollowed out of the bedrock after the Tower itself had been built.

Although the air was a bit stuffy and very dusty, with a hint of strange metallic scents, it was not at all damp. Nor was the room as gloomy and ill-lit as An'desha had anticipated. There were more of those magical lights everywhere, and as An'desha looked around, he had no doubt at all just what Urtho had used this room for. It was a workshop, with everything necessary for an inveterate tinkerer who was interested in literally everything.

Needless to say, the room was very crowded, despite the fact that it was just a little smaller than the main room above. This was not a mage's classical workroom, a place where only magic took place, and few if any physical components were needed. This was a place where anything and everything could be worked with, played with, investigated. Here was a bench with an array of glassware and rows of jars that had once held chemicals both liquid and solid—most of the former long since evaporated, leaving only dust or oily residue in the bottoms of their bottles. There stood another bench with a small lathe, clamps, a vise, and tools for working wood and ivory and beside it a similar bench with the tools for shaping soft metals, and a third bench with the tools for cutting and polishing lenses, glass, and crystal. Looking incongruous beside that was a potter's wheel and glassblower's pipes, and along the back wall were a forge, a kiln, a glassmaker's furnace, and a smelter. They probably had once shared a chimney, long since blocked up by the destruction of the Tower above. There were more benches and work spaces set up, but from the staircase An'desha could not tell what they were, only that most of them had been in use up to the day of the Cataclysm.

An'desha simply stood and stared as the others wandered about, looking, but not touching. Master Levy on the other hand, looked supremely satisfied by what he saw, as he surveyed it all from the staircase.

"Now this is much more in my way of doing things," he said, folding his arms across his chest and looking over the workshop with approval. "I believe I could have liked this Urtho."

On all of the benches—all of them—were projects in various states of completion. It was difficult to tell what some of them had been intended to do, if anything. There were pages of notes arrayed neatly beside each of these projects; it appeared that, in his workplace at least, Urtho was a tidy and methodical man. Firesong stood beside a particular bench laden with some very odd equipment indeed. He gazed on these pieces of paper with longing, although he forbore to touch them.

"This is maddening," he complained, hovering over a small sheaf of scrawled manuscript. "I'm afraid even to breathe on these things for fear that they'll fall to dust, but I think I may die if I can't read what's on the next page!"

But something about the way the "paper" looked stirred echoes in An'desha's deepest memories; he descended the last few stairs and made his way over to what appeared to be a small jeweler's workbench. There was a half-finished brooch there, nothing magical or mechanical, obviously just a piece of jewelry in the shape of a hummingbird to be inlaid with a mosaic of tiny agate-pieces formed into stylized feathers. "Wait," he muttered. The original design lay next to it, and after a close examination of the sheet, An'desha picked it up.

Silverfox stifled a gasp, and Firesong bit off a protest. He waved the intact and flexible drawing at them to prove it was not hurt by handling.

"Pick up what you want," he urged, "It's not paper. Or rather, it isn't like the paper we know and use now. It's a special rag-paper treated with resins so it wouldn't disintegrate. You can write on it in silverpoint, crayon, or graphite-stick, but not ink; ink just beads up and won't penetrate."

"Really?" Master Levy walked to the bench nearest him and picked up another piece of the paper. "Very useful around chemicals, I would guess."

"Very useful around anything that might ruin your notes," Firesong observed, snatching up the papers he had stared at so covetously. "oh—now this—oh, my—" He held the papers up so that Silverfox could peruse them, too, as between them they tried to decipher Urtho's notes in ancient Kaled'a'in, using the Hawkbrother tongue Firesong knew and Silverfox's modem Kaled'a'in as guides.

Che'sera looked at them curiously, but Lo'isha laughed at their immediate absorption. "Oh, we have lost them for a time," he said indulgently. "I know that look. The weaver is one with the loom!"

"Not entirely," Firesong responded absently. "But I will be very pleased when this scholar of Silverfox's shows up, so he can help us with this. If these notes are right, this may be the answer to our isolation here." He waved a hand at the bench and what looked to be a pair of mirrors serving as the lids to a matching pair of boxes. "These are completed, or all but some cosmetic frippery—and they're supposed to act like a pair of linked scrying spells, except they don't use true-magic, they use mind-magic. Apparently it can work over unknown, incredible distances. Somehow they amplify it so that it only needs one person with mind-magic to make both boxes work, or so I think this says."

That made every head in the place turn toward the Adept, and he finally looked up from the notes he was sharing with Silverfox, shaking his hair out of his eyes. "Got your attention then, did I?" he asked, with a sly smile.

:If these devices use mind-magic, they won't be disrupted by the mage-storms,: commented a mental voice from above, and Altra flowed gracefully down the staircase, taking a seat on one of the steps at about head-height to the humans. :That would be more than merely useful. If we learned how to use them, I could take one to Haven; if we learned how to make them, I could take another to Solaris. And I certainly have enough mind-magic to make them work, no matter who wishes to use them.:

"I thought you said that you didn't want to Jump anymore," Firesong said sardonically. An'desha chuckled.

:I don't want to, but devices like these could replace that aspect of my duties as well as give us the resources of all of Master Levy's colleagues at Haven,: the Firecat replied with immense dignity. :For that matter, if we could concoct a third device, I would not necessarily have to Jump it to Solaris; Hansa could come and get it instead.:

An'desha hid a smile at the unspoken implication behind Altra's statement, an implication that Altra felt his colleague and fellow Firecat had been getting off a bit too easily in the transportation department.

:Our ability to Jump is partly true-magic, partly mind-magic,: the Firecat continued, for once without any hint of irony or mockery in his mind-voice. :It is growing hazardous for passengers to Jump with us, as Master Levy and Sejanes discovered. It is no longer comfortable for us to Jump very long distances, and I was not exaggerating earlier about how I felt when we arrived. I was exhausted and drained, not a common occurrence until now. I can predict a time very soon when it could become actually inconceivably dangerous for us to Jump. But if we have a way to communicate with Haven and Karse—such a thing would be beyond price.:

"I had deduced that for myself, thank you," Firesong replied with a touch of acid. "If you can just conjure up that Kaled'a'in scholar, we have a chance of learning how to use these things before the time comes when you can't take one back to Valdemar."

"The scholar will be here soon," Che'sera put in, looking up from the glassware bench. His dark-blue clothing reflected richly from the surface of the dusty glassware. "The main problem has been that since his assistant is a—what do you call the lizard-folk—?"

"Hertasi," Silverfox interjected. The handsome kestra'chern's face lit up at Che'sera's words. "Ah, so it is Tarrn who is coming! Oh, that is very good, he may be frail, but he is the finest scholar in the ancient version of our tongue outside the lands of White Gryphon, and a good being as well." Silverfox seemed immensely relieved by what Che'sera had said, and that in itself made An'desha feel as if they were all beginning to make some progress at last.

"Yes. It seems the problem has been to find a way to bring both of them in a gryphon four-harness carry-basket and still keep the hertasi warm without magic." Che'sera left the glassware-bench, and moved back toward the staircase. "When I left, a means had been devised, and they were planning on arriving within two or three days of when I expected to be here. They had only to manufacture this device, whatever it was, and then they could leave. I would have told you earlier, when I first arrived, but you all seemed quite busy, and I had business with An'desha that I wished to conclude before I dealt with anything else."

"That is even better news!" Now Firesong seemed much happier as well, so much so that he forbore to comment on that last statement. "I vote that if we can't, on superficial examination, find anything more important to investigate than these devices, we'll concentrate on those for our immediate goal. If we can communicate with all of the mages and Artificers on a regular basis, it will be as good as being at Haven with all the advantages of being here in the Tower to implement what we deduce."

He looked around at the rest of the party, most of whom shrugged with indifference or bafflement. "You and Sejanes should be the ones to decide. I'll be of very little use without a translator in any event," Master Levy said with great candor. "At the moment, I have nothing really to work on, as I believe we need to develop a new set of theories to match the changed conditions. Those, I feel, must come from things we can learn by studying the Cataclysm itself and Urtho's own methodologies. So until the translator arrives, what I can and will do, is attempt to find out if this place holds any more secrets in the floor."

"Very little use!" Firesong actually snorted. "After you were the one who found this place! No false modesty, thank you, Master Levy!"

"I may be of some slight assistance here below," Che'sera said, with great caution. "I shall examine those objects that seem to partake of the nature of the shaman, and see if I may make something of them. We Shin'a'in lost some things when the Cataclysm destroyed our land and sundered the Clans. I may be able to rediscover some of what was lost, and that may be of some help."

Hah! An'desha thought with triumph. Now I know what you are, o mysterious one! Both Sworn to the Old One and a shaman! Now, is it a need to keep an eye on all these mages that brings you here, or was it the hope of keeping us from finding things that the Clans would rather we didn't learn? Is it an interest in what you might find within the walls of this Tower, or is it something else altogether? Myself, perhaps?

It could be, but he was not going to have the hubris to assume that the latter was the case. There were plenty of reasons for the Kal'enedral to want a shaman here; most of the Sworn were not leshy'a with a direct link to the Star-Eyed, though they could all walk the Moonpaths when they chose. Although An'desha had seen more than one or two of the Veiled Ones about, they had never stayed for very long, and he had the feeling that they were not "permitted" to take a physical form for too long—perhaps just long enough to serve some specific need, or be in themselves a kind of message.

The Moonpaths... perhaps I ought to go walk them myself. I haven't seen or spoken to Tre'valen and Dawnfire since we burned out that weapon of Urtho's.

Firesong looked up, as if distracted for a moment, and cast a speculative look at An'desha. "You know," he began, "it is all too fortuitous, that we find these things."

An'desha smiled a little as he noticed Che'sera looking at him in a similar way. He heard himself saying, "It is the way of the Star-Eyed to provide such opportunities for those who will help themselves. If I were you, I'd be careful with these new finds, for She is unlikely to hand over easy answers. The mind that controls the hand must use the tool wisely, and all tools can harm their user."

Firesong grunted, and actually looked for a moment as if he could be considering those words in the way a Shin'a'in would acknowledge the cryptic advice of a shaman as being worthy of meditation. Then the Adept shrugged a little and made off with the sheaf of notes.

An'desha looked about the workshop to see what the others were doing; Che'sera cracked a slight smile and rejoined Lo'isha, huddling together over a workbench's treasures in the far corner. Sejanes was examining the bench with some of the equipment that An'desha could not immediately identify. Firesong and Silverfox were halfway up the staircase in no time, with their papers in their hands, chattering to one another and ignoring everything else about them. Master Levy was already back up on what An'desha was now thinking of as the "ground" floor, and Karal was probably still asleep. There might or might not be other Kal'enedral besides Che'sera about; they preferred to spend much of their time in the camp on the surface, and since he had arbitrarily taken care of dinner preparations, there was really no need for any of them to be inside the Tower at this point. This would be as good a time as any to walk the Moonpaths undisturbed.

He went up the stairs as quietly as he could, nodding to Altra on the way. The Firecat nodded back with immense dignity, then turned to follow Firesong and Silverfox, tail waving like a jaunty banner. Evidently he wanted to hear what they were up to, probably because they were the most interesting creatures in the Tower at this, moment.

An'desha turned his steps in toward the sleeping chamber. Karal was, indeed, still asleep. He noticed as he paused in the doorway that Master Levy was in the side chamber where An'desha and Karal had found indications of another trapdoor. The Artificer was back down on his hands and knees and peering at the pattern in the floor. Florian was beside him, occasionally tapping a hoof on the stone at his direction.

An'desha tiptoed past Karal to his own sleeping place. You know, if I look more as if I'm taking a nap, I'm less likely to be disturbed. He pulled off his boots and curled up in his bedroll, arranging himself in what he thought was a very natural-looking position.

It occurred to him as he closed his eyes that he was being very secretive about this, when there really was no reason for him to do so. On the other hand, I don't think I want Che'sera to know everything I'm doing until I know more about him. If Che'sera turned out to be as rigid and inflexible as Jarim first was, or as hidebound as the shaman of An'desha's home Clan, it would be easier to keep away from him and his demands if he wasn't aware of everything An'desha knew or could do. All I've told him is that the Avatars appear to me, not that I can go look for them. I think I'll keep it that way for now.

He settled himself comfortably, then slowed his breathing and began the combination of relaxation and tension that marked a Moonpath trance. This, for those who were not trained in the technique, was more difficult than it sounded; too much tension and the trance state would never be reached, too much relaxation brought on a nap rather than a trance. Once he hovered on the edge of trance, with all of his attention focused, and nothing from the "real" world intruding, he sent his mind going in, and then out, in the pattern that Tre'valen had shown him, that felt like so very long ago.

He found himself, in his vision, standing on a path made of silvery sand that sparkled with a subdued glimmer, in the midst of an opalescent mist that swirled all around him. Or rather, he seemed to be standing there; this body was an illusory one, and he could change it to another form if he concentrated on it. This was a comfortable form, one he didn't have to think about to maintain, and it didn't seem reasonable to waste time and energy changing it to something else. He still was not certain if the Moonpaths themselves were an illusion; he had never bothered to test his surroundings to find out. The mist had no scent, and was neither cool nor warm; the sand beneath his feet neither so soft as to impede his steps, nor so hard as to be noteworthy.

"Tre'valen?" he called out into the mist, his voice echoing off into the distance in a way that had no counterpart in the real world. "Dawnfire?" The mist swirled about him, following his words with eddies of faint colors that faded within moments.

He had no answer immediately, but he didn't expect one. The Avatars were not in existence to serve and please him, after all, and he was well aware of that. Instead, he moved out along the path of soft sand, occasionally calling the names of his friends quietly into the mist. Eventually, if they were not occupied with something more important, they would come to him.

And so they did. They came winging through the mist in their bird shapes, forms the shape of a vorcel-hawk, but the size of a human, and with the sparkling, fiery, multicolored plumage of a firebird. He knew they were coming before they arrived, for they lit up the mist in the far distance like lightning within a thundercloud as they flew toward him, their flight paths spiraling around each other, leaving a double helix of light through the fog in their wakes.

Here they did not need to backwing to a landing as they would if they had taken "real" hawk-forms in the world. They simply slowed, then went into a hover above the path, then flowed into the vaguely avian-human shapes they normally wore to speak to him. Tre'valen was dressed as the Shin'a'in shaman he had been before he became the Star-Eyed's Avatar; but Dawnfire, though clearly Tayledras rather than Shin'a'in, wore a simple tunic that could not be readily identified as coming from any particular culture. Her long silver hair moved slightly, like the mist that swirled slowly about her. They both seemed to be completely ordinary humans—except for their eyes.

Not eyes, but eye-shaped windows on the night sky... the darkness of all of night spangled with the brightest of stars. So beautiful….

It was said that Kal'enel Herself had eyes like that; in this way She marked these two as Her Avatars, a way that could not be mistaken for anything else.

"Younger Brother!" Tre'valen greeted him warmly. "It is far too long since we have seen you, but I pledge that we have not been idle in that interval!"

"Not all that long for a mere mortal," he corrected with a smile, "but a great deal has been happening to us as well. I was not certain if you knew about what we have uncovered and learned, and besides that, I wanted to make sure that you two were all right after the Working."

Not that I could have done anything if they weren't.

Dawnfire shrugged fluidly. "Poor young Karal bore the brunt of our Working, and we two were only a little drained," she said, and extended a cool hand to him, which he took in brief greeting. "It sounds as if you have not been idle either—you in the Tower."

That confirmed one of his guesses, that the Avatars, for all their power, were neither omniscient nor omnipotent. They were bound by some physical laws at least. Was that because they were not really physically "dead," as the spirit-Kal'enedral were? Or was it because they had been granted wider powers by the Star-Eyed?

"Would you like to tell me what you can, or hear what news I have first?" he asked.

"Your news; I suspect that much of what we have to tell you will be mere confirmation of what you already know," Tre'valen told him. "We have been ranging far in the world and in the Void, to see what changes the Working wrought on the energy-patterns of the Storms, and how far-reaching those changes were. I fear I bring no startlingly good news."

An'desha nodded, and detailed everything that had been happening since the "Working" of which Karal had been the channel; from the effect that being the focus of so much energy had wrought on the young Karsite priest, to the departure of the gryphons and the arrival of Sejanes and Master Levy, to the comings and goings of so many Kal'enedral, to Che'sera's intense interest in him. Lastly, he described the events of the afternoon, the opening of the hidden trapdoor and the discovery of the workshops below.

They both listened with concentration and apparent interest—and surprise when he described the workshops. So, the existence of the workshop is something that the Star-Eyed did not tell them, though Her agents have certainly been about. Interesting.

"There may be answers there," Tre'valen said at last, and for a fleeting moment, his face took on that "listening" expression that Karal wore when either Florian or Altra Mindspoke him. An'desha wondered if the Star-Eyed might be speaking to Her Avatar at that instant, and his next words might have been a confirmation of that. "Certainly Firesong should pursue the investigation of the mind-mirrors; they should not be difficult to revive nor to duplicate, and they will serve you all in the days to come."

Oh, my; even more interesting. Perhaps my intuition about the Star-Eyed's providence was well-founded.

Dawnfire placed one long hand on Tre'valen's shoulder and, with a rueful expression, admitted, "This is the only concrete advice we can give at the moment. Would it were otherwise, but the future is still trackless and without a clear path. And even our Goddess is bound by constraints She cannot break, so that we may all work out our futures with a free will."

An'desha sighed, but saw no reason to doubt her. "So we are still muddling our way through a point when there are many futures possible? I had hoped after the Working that we would at least have gotten our feet on a clear path again!"

Tre'valen looked uneasy. "The danger has only been postponed, not negated, but luckily the forces involved have not worsened," he told An'desha. "You knew that the Working was not a solution to the mage-storms, only a reprieve, and that has not changed."

"We have been tracking the results of the Working since the initial release of the energy contained in Urtho's weapon." Dawnfire took up the thread of conversation. "The effect is all that one could have wished over Valdemar, the Pelagirs, Karse and Rethwellan and even Hardorn. The waves that you sent out are canceling the waves of the mage-storms, but—only to a point."

"What point?" he asked instantly, sensing that this was important, although he did not know why yet.

"Just beyond the border of Hardorn in the East," Tre'valen told him. "Also South, just at the borders of the Haighlei Empire, and around White Gryphon and its environs, but they know how to deal with the effects. And in any case, the Storms are weak there. North, well into the Ice-Wall Mountains. To the West, well, that is Pelagir-wilds and the Storms will hardly change that. It is East that concerns us, for the Empire is the recipient of the worst of the Storms, and they are causing great havoc there, among those who depend so much upon magic."

An'desha gave that some thought. "That could be good for us, or bad," he said finally. "Given what the Emperor did to us, I'm not at all sad to hear that they are having troubles. I'd rather that the Empire was so busy trying to hold itself together that they had no time to think of us, but Duke Tremane thought we were the source of the Storms, and what if the Emperor's people assume the same and retaliate?"

Tre'valen nodded. "Precisely. Warn your friends, An'desha, and when the mind-mirrors are working and in place, use them to warn Valdemar. Such things could be possible."

Could be possible, he says. Yet if I understand the constraints the Avatars labor under, pointing out something specifically as possible may be the only warning they are allowed to give of a future they have seen. Or perhaps not...

Despite the unpleasant information, An'desha felt a warm glow of satisfaction. The Avatars avoided giving direct advice most of the time, but he was getting better at deducing what they wanted him to think about, and what information was the most critical to the current situation.

"What about the Storms themselves?" he asked. "Eventually, they're going to become strong enough to overcome the counter-Storm we sent out, aren't they? That's why we knew what we did was only going to be temporary—" He watched Tre'valen's face carefully and took his cues from the faint changes in expression, as he suspected he was supposed to do. "—so eventually, what happens? We're getting a—a reversal of the original Cataclysm, am I right? That was why we used this spot for the Working, because it's the place where the waves converge. Eventually the Storms are going to overcome the Working, and build up to something very bad?" He swallowed uncomfortably as Tre'valen's slight nod told him he was on the right track. "So then what? Obviously, the Storms that got set off aren't going to—go back into the weapons and things they came from. Do we get the Cataclysm all over again?"

Tre'valen shook his head, but not in negation, and Dawnfire spread her hands wide. "That is just what we do not know," she admitted. "And I confide in you—neither does She. There are too many possibilities, and some of them rest on very subtle factors. We do not yet know what the mages and Powers of the Empire will do, and that will have an effect. There are many things that you could do here, all of them effective, but in different ways and with differing results. Probably there will be another, lesser Cataclysm, unless you here manage to do one of the things that could avert or absorb it. There are many things you could do; you could do nothing whatsoever, as well, and from any action that is taken there are the possibilities of prosperity or ruin in varying degrees. Whatever happens, that is all we can tell you for certain."

He groaned. "That is not much comfort!" he complained. "But I suppose that it gives me enough to tell the others for now."

Tre'valen managed a ghost of a smile. "We never pledged to bring you comfort, younger brother," he chided gently. "Only enough help that you need not make your decisions blind, deaf, and ignorant."

"Let me ask about something closer to home, then," An'desha replied. "Che'sera. What is Che'sera to me, or I to Che'sera? Sooner or later he will deduce the source of my information, whether or not I actually say where it comes from in his presence."

Tre'valen's expression softened with affection. "What is Che'sera to you? Simply enough—a teacher, if you should decide, for yourself, that you wish to learn what he has to teach. And what are you to Che'sera? Largely, affirmation. He has been searching for someone to pass his knowledge on to, and he hopes that you will be that person. But it must be your decision, and he will not urge it upon you. He is—a good man, and much in the same way of thinking as Master Ulrich was; Karal will be like him, one day."

So. There it was, out in the open at last; his invitation to become a shaman. And not, perhaps, just any shaman, but one Sworn to the Goddess in her aspect as Wisdom Keeper. He sighed, wishing that he could be as certain of what he wanted as Karal was. But at least now he knew that Che'sera was neither a fanatic nor inflexible. That took a few worries from his shoulders, at least.

"You will be seeing more of us in days to come," Dawnfire told him, her sweet face full of seriousness. "I promise you, An'desha, we will tell you and help you all that we can; we see no good reason to leave you without aids and guides in this—"

Tre'valen looked out into the mists suddenly.

"—and right now, we must go," Tre'valen interrupted her. "There are more things we must investigate and watch for you. Fare well, younger brother! Time is running, and it is not on our side."

And with that, An'desha found himself alone again on the Moonpaths, as if the Avatars had never been there. With no further reason to remain, he sent his awareness dropping slowly back into his physical self, going down, then out—

As he slowly woke his senses, he heard Karal stirring at last, and smelled the distinctive scent of the meat and bean mixture he had prepared earlier. His stomach growled, and he opened his eyes.

"I brought you some dinner," Karal said, looking at him intently as he handed An'desha a bowl. "You were with them, weren't you?" Karal hooked his thumbs together and made flapping gestures with his fingers by way of definition.

He saw no reason to deny it, and nodded as he sat up slowly, and accepted the bowl and spoon from Karal. "They didn't tell me anything we didn't already know, or at least not much. I'll let Firesong and Sejanes know as soon as I've eaten."

Karal looked better than he had in days, and An'desha wondered if that was all due to the work of the Shin'a'in Healer, or if the Avatars had a hand in it. He suspected the latter, and not for the first time wondered what the link between Vkandis and the Shin'a'in Goddess was. The Avatars seemed quite drawn to Karal, and he to them.

On the other hand, they are very compassionate by nature, and he certainly deserves compassion and sympathy.

"Florian and I are going out for some fresh air. Do you want to go with us?" Karal invited nonchalantly. "I'm tired of being down underground like a hibernating bear; I want to see the sun before I go mad." He shook his head. "I can't imagine how that mage was able to stand being cooped up in here."

"You may see the sun, but you won't feel it," An'desha cautioned." It's so cold that if you pour out a cup of water it'll be ice before it hits the ground."

"So I'll bundle up," Karal shrugged. "I've felt cold before. Karse isn't exactly a pleasure garden in winter, and up in the hills, there's snow on the ground for half the year. I'm beginning to sympathize with the gryphons; if I don't see some open sky, I'm going to start babbling."

"Then I'll go with you." It didn't take An'desha very long to pull on a heavy tunic, a second of the same weight, then his quilted Shin'a'in coat over it all, but Karal needed a little more help getting all that clothing on. He was quite steady on his feet, however, which An'desha took to be a good sign of his recovery.

By now, Master Levy was deep in his prodding and poking of the floor, and he jotted down measurements and diagrams in one of his notebooks. Silverfox and Firesong were sitting on their heels, the pages of notes neatly stacked in front of them, regarding another sheaf of their own notes with some dubiousness. "Where are you two going?" Silverfox called as the three of them passed by.

"We're going out for some fresh air," Karal replied. "Why don't you join us? We'll go frighten the Shin'a'in into thinking what you found in the workroom turned us all into monsters." He made a hideous face and Silverfox laughed.

"Fresh air? Not a bad idea." Firesong raised his head as Karal tendered his invitation. "We aren't making much more out of these notes. Maybe a little sun will wake up my mind. Go on out, we'll catch up with you."

An'desha noticed at once that their hosts had been at work on the tunnel to the surface—the opening they had made into the side of the Tower was large and quite regular, without any debris of broken masonry to trip over. The tunnel was also wider, though no higher, and there had been some extensive work done in shoring it up since the last time he'd come through it. It was still claustrophobic, but on this trip he no longer had the feeling that the tunnel was going to collapse and trap him at any moment.

He sent a small mage-light on ahead of Karal; he couldn't see past Florian's rump, so a mage-light was hardly of much use to him. Altra had declined to come, saying that he had seen quite enough of snow, and was planning another nap in Karal's bed.

He scented the outside before he saw any indication they were nearing the entrance. Although the air below remained remarkably clean, and the scents that lingered, thanks to some small magics on his part and Firesong's, were all pleasant in nature, there was a fresh quality to the outside air that nothing below could duplicate. Some of that was due to the cold, but not all.

The other thing they could not duplicate below was the light. As he stumbled out into the late afternoon sunlight, he squinted and put out a hand to steady himself against Florian's side. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky; the great bowl of the sky itself was an intense and blinding blue, and with all of the glare reflected off the snow, there was as much light coming from below as above.

Karal stood to one side, taking in huge gulps of air, his pale face taking on more color with every breath. Florian trotted off and kicked up his heels friskily.

Seen from the outside, the Tower itself was hardly more than a snow-frosted stub of melted-looking rock protruding from a snow-covered, rolling hill; the only projection above the otherwise flat Plains at all, not prepossessing except for its size. Because they had dug a long, slanting tunnel to reach the wall of the Tower below, the entrance came out quite some distance from the remains of the Tower itself, and it was at the foot of the Tower, precisely above the point where they had broken into the walls, that the Shin'a'in had pitched their tent-village. The round felt tents, white and brown and black, made a very orderly and neat array against the snow, so neat and orderly that it looked like a model rather than a place where people were actually living and working.

"Whoof!" Firesong exclaimed from behind An'desha, as Florian frisked and gamboled in the snow with Karal laughing and throwing snowballs for him to dodge. "Very bright out here! I shouldn't wonder if you could get a worse sunburn than in high summer!"

Silverfox ducked as Karal turned and lobbed a snowball at them. Karal laughed, and the kestra'chern pelted after him, swearing vengeance, while Firesong looked on indulgently.

"So," the Adept asked quietly, while Karal and Silverfox took shelter behind facing snowbanks, and hurled missiles at each other. "What did your Avatars have to say for themselves?"

An'desha flung him a startled glance, and Firesong chuckled at his expression. "You have a certain quiet glow after you've gone visiting them," the mage told him. "It's not terribly obvious, but it's there if you know what to look for. So? What did they have to say? Anything useful?"

"Mostly that nothing has changed that much. We've successfully bought some time for ourselves and our friends, things outside the areas we protected are deteriorating quickly, and eventually even our time will run out," An'desha said, wishing his news was better.

Firesong nodded, unsurprised. "And when our time runs out, we'll get—what? A replication of the Cataclysm? After all, everything is supposedly converging here."

"Maybe. Even They don't know for sure." An'desha sighed. "If She has any idea, She's not saying anything. If you want my guess, the gods are doing what They always do—unless and until all life is threatened with catastrophe, They'll see to it we have the tools and the information to find our own solutions, then leave us alone to find them. The Avatars think the things we're finding in the Tower will help us, but—"

"'But there's no clear 'future' to see or even guess at." Firesong looked surprisingly philosophical. "I'm determined to see this as an opportunity; for once in my life there isn't a god or a spirit or the hand of fate or prophecy or anything else demanding that I trace a certain pattern on the pages of time. We're going to make our own future here, An'desha, and nothing is going to interfere with us to make it go some other god-ordained way. There's a certain satisfaction in that, you know."

"I suppose so," An'desha replied; he would have said more, but Silverfox suddenly broke off the snowball fight to peer into the north, and point.

"Look!" he exclaimed with glee, as Karal dropped his final snowball without throwing it to squint in the direction he indicated. "Gryphons! Yes! They have a carry-basket, and I think they've brought Tarrn!"

An'desha shaded his eyes and narrowed them against the glare, and finally made out four sets of flapping wings with a half-round shape beneath them. He couldn't think what else would have that particular configuration except four gryphons and a large carry-basket.

"Come on!" Silverfox crowed. "Let's go meet them!"

He set off at a run; Florian loped up and half-knelt beside Karal, who pulled himself onto the Companion's back. The two of them quickly overtook Silverfox; Firesong cast an amused glance at An'desha and indicated the others with a finger.

"Shall we trundle along behind?" he asked.

"It would only be polite," An'desha pointed out. "And besides, the Shin'a'in have cleared a perfectly fine path between here and there. It would be a shame not to use it."

They followed in Silverfox's wake, though at a more leisurely pace. By the time they arrived at the Shin'a'in tent-village, the gryphons and their passengers had already landed and been taken into one of the tents. It was easy to tell which one; there was only one that was large enough to hold four gryphons at once, and only one whose pallet of snow had been churned by gryphon claws.

Dark-clad Kal'enedral nodded as Firesong waved to them, then went about their own business. An'desha pulled the entrance flap aside, and he and the mage entered the tent, being careful to let in as little cold air as possible. It took quite a bit of time for An'desha's eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the tent after all the snow glare outside; he stayed where he was while he waited, listening to the chatter of at least half a dozen creatures all speaking at once.

He looked around as soon as he could make anything at all out; he didn't recognize any of the gryphons, but he hadn't expected to. They were all arranged at one side of the tent, and it came as no surprise to see that they were eating—or rather, gorging. Not only would they have to recover from the stress of carrying their passengers all the way from K'Leshya Vale, but they would have to recover from the stress of dealing with the cold as well.

Karal was conversing with the gryphons, occasionally helping them where the quarters were too cramped for them to move themselves. Silverfox, however, was engaged in a highspeed conversation with a gray-muzzled, but jaunty-looking kyree.

This odd creature, vaguely wolflike as to the head and coat, but also vaguely catlike in body shape and proportions, was easily the size of a small calf. An'desha knew more about kyrees from personal experience than from Falconsbane's memories, as Mornelithe Falconsbane in all of his incarnations had very little to do with the creatures. An'desha, on the other hand, was quite familiar with Rris, the kyree representative to the Kingdom of Valdemar and the Alliance. Rris might look like this old fellow many years from now; his muzzle was quite white, and his head was liberally salted with paler hairs among the black. He was tired, but clearly in good spirits, and he chatted with Silverfox like the old friend he probably was.

Or to be more accurate, Silverfox chattered; the kyree, who could only Mindspeak, nodded and made replies in his own inaudible fashion. Until Tarrn chose to "speak" in the "public" mode, no one would hear him except those he chose.

With him, bundled in so many layers of quilted clothing he resembled a roll of brightly colored Kaled'a'in bed coverings, was a hertasi. He was practically sitting on a brazier, since the lizard-folk were very susceptible to cold. It wasn't that they were cold-blooded, precisely, it was that they were not able to control their own body temperatures very efficiently. Opinions were divided on whether hertasi had been created by Urtho or by an accident involving magic, but in either case their physiology had some flaws, and this was the major one. The poor thing could very easily lose limbs to the cold, or would go involuntarily into a kind of hibernation. Layers of clothing would not necessarily help this, especially not during a long journey in bitter cold, hence the brazier now and whatever other measures the Kaled'a'in had taken. All that could be seen of this hertasi was the end of the snout and a pair of alert, bright, and apparently happy eyes peeking out of the depths of the hood.

A great deal more of Tarrn was visible. An'desha knew kyree from his acquaintance with Rris, but he had not had much opportunity to get to know any hertasi. A few had come with Silverfox and the Kaled'a'in delegation to Valdemar, but he hadn't had much to do with them. And of course, Falconsbane was universally despised by both races, in all his lives, so he would hardly have had any congress with them.

At just that moment, the hertasi spoke up; the hertasi associated with the Kaled'a'in tended to vocalize far more often than they used Mindspeech, the exact reverse of the habits of the ones associated with the Hawkbrothers.

"I believe I am thawed enough to make the dash for the Tower," he said, in a high-pitched voice with hints of a whistling sound underlying the tone.

:Excellent, Lyam,: the kyree replied. :They tell me our baggage is already there, waiting for us. If we truly make a dash, you won't get too much of a chill.:

"Florian says he'll be happy to carry Lyam, if Lyam thinks he can cling on," Karal spoke up. "Florian can get him to the tunnel mouth faster than he can get there on foot." He turned toward the hertasi, polite but a little uncertain in addressing such an odd creature. "A Companion's gait is very smooth, and I've never heard of one losing a rider, and you should see one run!"

"I have never tried riding, but if I can get from White Gryphon to here without the loss of limb or tail, I think I should be able to survive an attempt on a Companion's back," the hertasi said with warm good humor. "And almost anything is worth not having to walk through snow myself!"

"We ssshall ssstay herrre overrrnight," one of the gryphons said. "Thisss issss verrry comforrrtable, and we do not want to go underrrgrrround even to sssee the Towerrr!" The others nodded with agreement.

"It isss wonderrrful to be wherrre the grrreat Ssskandrrranon once wasss, but he did not have to crrrawl underrrgrrround," said another, flicking his wings nervously. "I do not know how Trrreyvan and Hydona borrre it."

The kyree didn't shrug, but An'desha had the impression that if he could have, he would have. "Suit yourselves; you will have to make do with my descriptions, then."

"Yourrr dessscrrriptionsss will be asss if we werrre therrre," the first gryphon said firmly. "I will fly the ssssky that Ssskandrranon flew, and that will be enough forr me."

Tarrn stood up, and shook himself thoroughly. :One more dash, then, and we will be where no kyree or hertasi has set foot in thousands of years!: He seemed to relish the prospect with scarcely-restrained glee, and the air of a creature a quarter of his apparent age. :Well, friends, let us take these last few paces at the gallop!:

Firesong, who had known many kyree and hertasi in his life, was comfortable with these two immediately. Tarrn had all of the warmth and wisdom of Irrl, one of Firesong's academic teachers, and Lyam had a great deal more assertiveness than most of the normally-timid Vales-bred hertasi. Although Firesong loved to be petted and made much of by his own hertasi, he had always found the shyness of the Vale hertasi something of an irritation. Someone once suggested that their manner was reflective of the deep trauma they had suffered during the Cataclysm, and that worried him deeply; if that was so, how would they react to another such event?

They'll cope, I suppose; it's the thing they do best. I don't know how they manage.

Both kyree and hertasi were at heart cave- and den-dwellers, and both of the new arrivals were obviously comfortable in the Tower. They settled into the same room shared by Karal and An'desha with every evidence of content. They had not yet moved in their luggage, but the Shin'a'in had brought appropriate bedding material for both of the new guests—and extra warming pans for both beds. As far as personal belongings went, the two had traveled much lighter than he had expected. Their main luggage consisted of boxes of very special writing materials; books of tough paper with waterproof metal covers that locked over the contents like protective boxes, and ink that would never run once it had dried, even if water was spilled directly on it. Tarrn was a historian; not a traditional kyree historian like Rris, who memorized and recited from memory—but the kind of historian like the Chronicler of Valdemar, who attempted to personally view as much as possible of epochal events, and to note the honest and bare facts in record-books called Chronicles. Only when those hard facts had been listed would Tarrn then make his own interpretations of the events, written separately in Commentaries. Tarrn was very serious about his calling; he would rather have the fur pulled out of his tail until it was as naked as a rat's than put a personal interpretation in the Chronicles.

Actually, that wasn't precisely true. Tarrn would dictate, for, having no hands, he could not write. Lyam would do the actual writing. Lyam was Tarrn's third secretary in a long life as a historian, and his relationship with the kyree was obviously based on affection and mutual respect. Normally it was Lyam who cared for the kyree's needs, but with Lyam just now the one who was in need, Tarrn was seeing to it in a quiet and dignified manner that Lyam got first priority.

Lyam needed warmth more than anything else, and Karal volunteered to take care of him. Firesong had an idea that he knew why, too. At heart, Karal still considered himself to be the young secretary who had ridden to Valdemar from Karse, and he must be feeling a great deal of empathy for Lyam.

That's good; they are both strangers in strange places, and it will do them good to have a friend with the same—outlook? Status? They have a lot in common, anyway.

Tarrn, however, was quite ready for work, and looked it. He had been consulting with Silverfox all the way here from the tent-village. Firesong could not imagine where he was getting the energy.

He approached Firesong with Silverfox still in tow as soon as Karal took Lyam off to be wrapped up in warmed blankets and given something hot to drink.

"Firesong, Tarrn wants to speak with you privately, before we get to work," Silverfox told him, with a quizzical expression. "He says he has something for you, but he can't tell me what it is."

The kyree nodded his head as Firesong turned to look down on him with surprise. :Indeed, Firesong k'Treva,: Tarrn said with grave courtesy. :I have. Would you come with me to where they have brought our belongings?:

"Certainly," Firesong replied with equal courtesy. "Would you prefer that I Mindspoke with you?"

:That will not be necessary, but thank you,: Tarrn replied, turning and walking slowly toward the heap of bundles that the Shin'a'in had left just inside the main room of the Tower.

:It is not that this is a secret matter,: the kyree continued. :It is simply that I have not been given permission to say anything to anyone else before I discharged my obligation.:

"Oh?" This was getting odder with every moment. Firesong couldn't think of anything or anyone among the Kaled'a'in of k'Leshya Vale who would have had anything to send to him.

Tarrn stopped beside the pile of belongings. :If you will please remove the three bags of Lyam's clothing there—: he indicated the drab bundles with his forepaw. :—you will find what I brought you beneath them. It is wrapped in blue wool, and it is very long and narrow.: Firesong easily moved the three packages, revealing a long, narrow packet wrapped in blue wool cloth and tied with string. Firesong picked it up.

And it Mindspoke to him.

:Hello, boy.: The grating, decidedly female voice was all too familiar to him, although it was not one he had expected to hear ever again.

"Need?" he gasped, as he tore at the wrappings, trying to free the blade within. Lyam must have wrapped it; the string was tied in a complicated knot-pattern only a hertasi or a kestra'chern could admire. He finally pulled off the string, the fabric fell away, and there was the ancient spell-bound sword. She looked precisely as she had the last time he saw her, strapped to Falconsbane's "daughter" Nyara's side as she and Herald Skif rode out of Valdemar to become Selenay's envoys to the Kaled'a'in and Tayledras, and possibly to the Shin'a'in as well.

"Need, what are you doing here?" He hadn't been taken so completely by surprise since—since he'd been kidnapped by his ancestor Vanyel!

:Nyara doesn't require me anymore; she's better off on her own,: the sword said to him. :There's nothing at k'Leshya that she, Skif, or the Kaled'a'in can't handle. You, on the other hand, are dealing with very old magics. I am very old magic, and I still recall quite a bit. I helped you once before, and I'm hoping I can help you again.:

Firesong held the sword in both hands, and stared at it. It was very disconcerting to be Mindspeaking with what should have been an inanimate object. A sword didn't have a face to read, eyes to look into, and it was difficult to tell if it could read his expressions.

But there's something about all this that doesn't quite make sense yet.

"I find myself wondering if there is something more to this than just an urge to help us here," he said finally. "You've never put yourself in nonfemale hands before."

:Hmm—let's say I've never done it deliberately, but it has happened, and it was usually with lads who had the same taste in men as my "daughters.": The sword chuckled, but he sensed there was still a lot more than she was telling, and he decided to press her for it.

:Try again,: he said sternly in Mindspeech. :You're avoiding my question.:

A sword could not sigh, but he got that sensation from her.

:All right. I could tell you to work it out yourself, but why waste time? You've got mage-storms disrupting magic; you've managed to get them canceled out for the moment, but we all know this is only a temporary respite, not a solution. I'm magic. I've managed to hold myself together this long, but each Storm gets stronger, and sooner or later I'm going to lose to one. I don't know what will happen when I lose, but it's going to happen.: She paused for a moment :Worst case is that I'll go up in fire and molten metal, the way the sword was made. Best case is that the magic will just unravel, and there won't be anything here but a perfectly ordinary sword.:

He had never once thought that Need might be affected by the Storms; she had always struck him as being so capable, so impervious, that it never occurred to him that she might have been in trouble.

This bothered him. :I can't promise anything,: he said soberly. :I don't even know if we're going to survive the end of this ourselves.:

To his surprise, the sword laughed, though rather sardonically. :You think I don't know that? If I go pfft, I don't want little Nyara to see it happen. She had enough troubles in her life and she shouldn't lose an old friend and teacher in that unexpected a fashion. Besides, if I'm going to go, I want to do it while I'm trying to accomplish something. How could I miss a chance at getting my hand in on what you're trying to do—It's complicated, it's dangerous, it's challenging, it's irresistible.:

"If you say so," he said aloud, but strapped the sword on anyway, for she required his presence to be able to see and hear clearly. Without a bearer, it took incredible effort for her to perceive anything, and at that it was only dimly. He didn't often carry a blade, and she felt very odd, slung across his back in Tayledras fashion. "An'desha will probably be happy to see you, but you're going to have to explain yourself to the rest. They don't know anything about you."

And the gods only know what the Shin'a'in are going to make of her. Yes, Kethry had carried her, and Kerowyn after that, but still—she was yet another creature of magic inside the heart of the Plains. How much more were they going to be willing to allow?

:I can't wait,: Need replied, with a bit less irony than he expected. :There's something rather amusing about the reactions people get the first time I talk to them.:

Amusing? Oh, gods. Firesong buried his irritation at this particular complication in an already complicated situation; after all, Need was right about her abilities. She did know much older magics than anyone here, and that included An'desha. That might be crucial at this point, for there could be something ancient and long-forgotten that would give them all the clues they needed to solve this situation. She was a powerful mage in her own right—something near to an Adept, or she never could have made the magics that bound her human soul to an iron blade. He, An'desha, and Sejanes were the only true mages here; having Need with them gave them a fourth.

And if she is right, and the mage-storms overwhelm her along with the rest of us, she won't have to worry about how she unravels. If she dissolves into flame and melted steel, we here among all these dangerous machines of power will have far more to worry about than her.

On the other hand, dealing with Need's irascible personality was not going to be easy. He rubbed his temples, feeling another headache coming on.

She Mindspeaks; perhaps I can get Tarrn interested in her. When he is not translating for us, wouldn't she be fascinating for a historian?

He could only hope that was the case, because he had the feeling that Need was not going to give him a choice about becoming her bearer. In this all-male enclave, he was probably the closest she was going to come to an acceptable bearer, for by now, even the female Companions they had ridden here on had begun the long journey back to Valdemar.

"Well, we might as well get this over now," he said aloud, as Tarrn watched him with interest. "I assume, sir, that you have made the acquaintance of my metal friend, here?"

:I have, and I hope she will continue to impart her tales of the past to me here, when our work permits,: Tarrn replied gravely, which made Firesong feel a little more cheerful about the situation. At least he wouldn't be burdened with Need's presence and personality all the time.

"Well, most of my other colleagues here don't even know she exists, so we'd better introduce her to them before she startles one of them into dropping something critical by mindspeaking to him without warning." Need remained silent after that little sally, which either meant that she agreed with him, or that she was insulted and was plotting revenge.

:An excellent plan,: Tarrn replied. :Carry on.:

He gathered them all together by the simple expedient of going into the central chamber, clearing his throat, and announcing, "Excuse me, friends, but something rather—unexpected—has come up that you really ought to know about."

That certainly brought everyone who understood Valdemaran boiling out, and the few Shin'a'in who didn't know the language followed the rest out of sheer curiosity.

Silverfox was the first to arrive, and stared at him as if he'd grown a tail. "Firesong," the kestra'chern began incredulously, "what are you doing with a sword?"

He removed Need from her sheath, just in case the leather and silk hampered her ability to Mindspeak at all, and held her out in front of him, balanced on his palms, as the others arrived. "Well. that's what I wanted to tell you all about," he said, flushing a little. "It seems we didn't get two additions to our little group here, we got three. I'd like you all to meet Need, those of you who haven't already encountered her."

"Need!" An'desha had only just emerged from the sleeping chamber, but there was no doubt that he was glad to see the mage-blade. "What is she doing here? This is wonderful!"

Firesong's expression must have been a bit sour, for An'desha took one look at his face and laughed. "Oh, it's that way, is it? You're the chosen bearer?" He looked down fondly at the blade. "Firesong is much too certain of his own expertise, dear lady; I trust you can teach him that there are other people here who are just as expert in their crafts as he. I warn you though, he looks much better this way than in a dress."

:Don't be so hard on him, boy,: the blade replied, amused. :Leave that job to me. I've got more experience at it.:

By now all the rest had gathered around, and were staring with varying degrees of fascination and puzzlement at the sword. "What is this?" Sejanes asked, brows knitted.

"Is this by any chance the famous sword called 'Need' that the ancestress of Tale'sedrin Clan once wore?" asked Lo'isha, as the other Shin'a'in gathered in a knot behind him, murmuring. "The one carried by our Clan-sib, Herald Kerowyn?"

"The same," Firesong all but groaned. "To answer you, Sejanes, Need is a magically made sword with the soul of its maker bound into it, and she is unbelievably ancient. Either she or Tarrn can probably tell you the story of why she did such a daft thing—"

:Hardly daft. Reckless, yes, and probably less than wise, but at the time we didn't have many options, and all of those were worse than what I did. Of course, I could have just folded my hands and done nothing at all, but—let's just say that went against my conscience and my nature.:

Those who didn't know what she was went wide-eyed with startlement at the sound of her projected mind-voice.

"The point is, she's from a time that actually predates the Mage Wars and the Cataclysm, at least so far as we can tell and that makes her an expert in magics much older than the ones we know," Firesong said, noting as he spoke that An'desha's eyes were unfocused, which probably meant he was talking privately to her. "She has volunteered to come help us, since her last bearer no longer requires her tutelage."

Master Levy rubbed his chin with one hand as he looked down on the sword with speculation. "What happens if and when the mage-storms overwhelm us here?" he asked. "If she is magically made—"

:Then unless I can manage to shield myself, which I'm not certain I can, I either go quietly or dramatically, and I don't know which it will be,: Need replied bluntly. :These Storms disrupt the patterns of magic so deeply they may as well be spells of Unmaking. But that would happen whether I was here or somewhere else, and I'd just as soon be trying to accomplish something. I told you, I'm not one to sit with folded hands, even if I still had hands to fold.:

"Wait a minute," Sejanes objected, speaking directly to the sword, glimmering with reflected light from above. "If you predate the Mage Wars and the Cataclysm, how did you survive them?"

:In a shielded casket in a shielded shrine in the heart of the triply-shielded Temple to Bestet, the Battle-Goddess,: she replied promptly. :And when the Cataclysm was over, the shields on the shrine and the casket were gone and I felt as if I'd been drained to the dregs. It took me years to recover, and by then I'd been moved to the armory since no one could figure out why I'd been put in with the Goddess' regalia in the first place. If I were inclined to such things, I'd have been indignant.:

Sejanes nodded. "It would be difficult to find such a situation again," he observed, stroking his chin with one hand. "Indeed, it is quite surprising that you were in that situation during the first Cataclysm."

:The only reason they had shields like that was because of the war with Ma'ar. I don't know of any Temples now with that kind of protection,: Need went on :Or to be more honest, I don't know of any that would offer me shelter. I might as well be doing something useful, and I just might be able to save myself while doing it.:

"Do you fear death so much?" Karal asked softly. Light rippled across the surface of the sword, as if Need reacted to that question.

Firesong expected a sarcastic reply, or none at all, but was surprised by both her answer and her sober tone.

:I don't fear death, youngling,: she said, with great honesty. :What I'm afraid of is more complicated than that. I don't want to vanish without fighting, I don't intend to just lie down and accept "death" passively. There is the possibility that I could meet my end violently, and if that is the case—:

"Then it would be better here," Sejanes said with finality, as a chill crept up Firesong's spine. "If there is a second Cataclysm and the effect penetrates this place, your demise will be insignificant compared to the violence that will be unleashed."

Light rippled along the surface of the blade again. :Good. You'd already considered that.:Need sounded relieved :I'd hoped I wouldn't be the bird of ill omen forced to point that out to you.:

I would rather hope we can pull this off right to the very end, thank you. "No, just the one who forced us to think about it a little earlier than we wanted to," Firesong sighed.

Now she gave him one of her typical sardonic chuckles. :Consider it incentive to find a solution,: she told him.

Now, of course, those who had never met Need wanted to speak with her; Firesong handed her over to An'desha for that, although he was quite aware that she was not going to change her mind about her choice of a bearer. Somewhat to his surprise, Karal separated himself from the group for a moment and approached him.

"I'm not quite sure what to say, except that I know it isn't going to be easy or very entertaining to have Need literally on your back while we work our way through all this," Karal said quietly. "I've had teachers like her. They were very good, but not easy to live with, and you have my sympathy, for what it's worth."

"Thank you, Karal," he replied with some surprise. The last thing he had expected was sympathy or understanding from the Karsite!

"Just trying to—oh, I don't know." Karal smiled crookedly. "Believe it or not, I like and admire you, Firesong. We irritate each other sometimes, but who doesn't? And I never properly thanked you for what you did for me."

Firesong found himself blushing hotly, something he hadn't done since boyhood. "Oh, please," he replied, for once at a loss for words. "Don't thank me, we all—"

Karal shook his head. "I know very well what all of you did, and I won't mention this again since it obviously makes you uncomfortable. I just want you to know that it's appreciated and you are appreciated. And—well, I think I've said enough."

Considering that Firesong didn't think he'd be able to flush any hotter, Karal was probably right. When the Karsite rejoined the group talking to Need, it was a decided relief.

:Ahem.:

This time the mind-voice was Tarrn's, and Firesong was very glad to hear it.

"Can I help you, sir?" he asked, looking down at the kyree, who was in turn looking up at him with amused golden eyes. The white hairs of his muzzle contrasted strangely with the youth in those eyes.

:Since virtually everyone else is involved with speaking to our metallic friend, why don't we go have a look at those notes Silverfox says you are so concerned with? If this device is what I believe it to be, then the translation will be a simple one, and we may have some answers within a quarter-day.:

"Really?" Firesong's eyebrows rose.

:Mind you, this is likely to be the only case where the translation will be so easy,: Tarrn cautioned, :And that is only because I am familiar with similar devices used by our gryphons. I think this is probably an improvement on those devices, allowing visions as well as thoughts and—: He stopped, and shook his head until his ears flapped. :—and we really ought to just see for ourselves before I make too big a liar of myself. Shall we?:

Firesong got the notes and spread the pages out on the floor in one corner of the main chamber. He and the kyree bent over them in intense concentration, with Lyam taking notes beside them, and before very long, Tarrn was able to determine that the device was nothing more than an improvement on something he called a "teleson."

At that point, Silverfox joined them again, and by the time supper came and went, they had worked out not only the way to activate the devices, but also how to make more.

Provided, of course, that there were sufficient parts to do so. There were some esoteric components that needed to be prepared beforehand, and Firesong wasn't certain whether or not there had been any of those components among the parts in bins on the workbench. Both Tarrn and Silverfox were of the opinion that, although the Kaled'a'in could probably make more of these components eventually, it would take a great deal of trial-and-error to do so, given the vagaries of the way the language had changed over the centuries.

"Well, let's confine ourselves to activating the two we have," Firesong said at last, sitting back on his heels and stretching muscles that had cramped in his shoulders and back. "If they work, then we can see if we can make a third and get it to work. With communication open back to Haven, that will give us more than we'd hoped for; open it to Sunhame, and we're doubly advantaged. We can worry about being able to build more of these devices from scratch later, when we have the leisure."

"That seems a good plan to me," Silverfox concurred, rotating his head and neck to stretch out cramps of his own. "Let me go and get one of the devices and bring it up here, and that way we can actually test it over a little distance." He looked around. "We'll need someone with Mindspeech up here. That would be Tarrn, I suppose."

:That seems reasonable,: the kyree said agreeably. :We will also need a mage—Sejanes, perhaps—to activate it.:

"And I'll go down to the workshop and activate and man the other device down there," Firesong said, getting to his feet. He and Silverfox descended the stairs down into the workshop; Silverfox took one of the two devices from the bench and carried it carefully up the staircase again.

The instructions for activation had been quite unambiguous and equally simple, phrased in language that not even the passage of time had altered. Even a child, had he both true-magic and Mindspeech, would have been able to follow the instructions. It was obvious from the notes now that the reason these devices had not been put into use by Urtho was that anyone could "eavesdrop" on conversations held with their aid. That rather negated their value in a time of war. Urtho's notes had made it very clear that Ma'ar had many folks Gifted with Mindspeech in his ranks, and that he used it as he would any other tool.

Firesong only hoped that communications sent through these telesons would not be forced into the minds of those with Mindspeech; if that were to be the case, their use would be severely limited. Having to maintain ordinary shields was one thing; having to put up shields against something like coercion in order to block these communications out would be very uncomfortable. And for those who were untrained and unaware of their Gift, it would be impossible.

I don't want to drive people mad by having them suddenly forced to listen to strangers talking in their heads!

Well, there was only one way to find out for certain.

A very little magic was needed to help activate the device, and none to maintain it once it was active. There was nothing for mage-storms to disrupt; the device took Mindspeech and amplified it, using some resonance of an arrangement of crystals. The trick was, even those who normally would not be considered to have Mindspeech would be able to use it also; it only needed one so Gifted on one of the two telesons in order for the trick to work.

That would mean that Master Levy could talk with one of his fellow Artificers through the intermediary of a Herald, or a mage so Gifted could speak with Sejanes, who was not.

Hmm. And if the device isn't urgently needed, young Karal can talk with Natoli. The idea delighted him; now and again he had the urge to matchmake, and this was one of those times. It might be the strangest courtship ever on record, but if it worked—

Worry about that when you can get this ancient construction to operate! he scolded himself, and bent his concentration to doing just that.

A moment later—well, it seemed to be working. So far as he recalled the notes, it looked as if he had activated it. But—

:FIRESONG?: If it had been a real voice and not a mindvoice, the shout would have deafened him. As it was, it was excruciatingly painful!

"Aiii!" he shouted, clapping his hands over his ears, even though he knew that wasn't going to make a difference.

:Sorry.: That was a more normal "volume," although there was no sound involved. :Is that better?:

He didn't recognize the mind-voice; it certainly wasn't Tarrn. It also "sounded" rather odd, and he couldn't tell why. :Who is this?: he sent back cautiously, so as not to blast their minds.

:Sejanes. I must say, this is an interesting way to speak.: Firesong blinked for a moment, both to clear his thoughts and to try to pinpoint just why the mind-voice felt so strange. The mental images—

Wait, that's it. There are no mental images! There's no emotional flavor, no images, no leaking over of other thoughts! This is just like speaking, not like Mindspeech at all.

And that, for those who were not Gifted and not used to sorting through the wealth of additional information that came along with Mindsent "words," would be a good thing. :I believe we have a workable Pair of prototypes,: he sent back with glee.

His elation was matched by the others. After making certain that both devices were working according to the notes, and that all of the components were well-seated, the consensus was that they had earned a real respite.

But before they took that well-earned rest, everyone, Gifted and not, had a try at the teleson pair. The notes were correct; so long as one of the operators was Gifted, the result was the same, crisp, clear Mindspeech with no overtones of anything else. If both were Gifted, then the results were different; precisely like "normal" Mindspeech. To Firesong's relief, there was no "spillover" from the devices to those who were Gifted, although, as Urtho had indicated, the Gifted could "listen in" with perfect ease when the devices were in use.

Right now, that might be an advantage. It certainly wouldn't hurt to have more than two people at each Mindsent conference.

Altra had recovered enough from his last Jumps to take the device to Valdemar immediately, and insisted on doing just that, then and there. He saw no reason whatsoever to delay, and every reason to make all speed.

:With every mark that passes, it is more difficult to Jump,: he said firmly. :Why wait? It will be easier to Jump with an inanimate object, but "easier" does not mean "easy." I want to get this over with!:

There were no dissenting voices, so as soon as the mindmirror teleson had been wrapped in a cushion of quilts to keep it from any possibility of damage, Altra left, saying that he thought he would return in four days.

"We'll know if the device still works or if it works at the distances that Urtho claimed in two days, of course," Sejanes observed as they all prepared for sleep. Not that any of them really thought he would get much sleep after all the excitement that day. "In two days he'll be in Haven, and then it will just be a matter of getting one of the Heralds to try calling us."

He crept into his own bed—the only one that was a bed, since it was not possible for him to get into and out of a pallet on the floor.

"Or one of us can call them," Karal pointed out, and yawned. He was already in his bedroll, with Florian curled up at his back, taking the place of Altra as a living bedwarmer. "You know, I was really excited a couple of marks ago and I thought I'd never be able to get to sleep, but now—" He yawned again, and looked puzzled. "—now it seems as if this is an anticlimax."

Firesong had the answer to his puzzlement. "Well, we're all worn out—it's been a very busy day—but there's more to it than that." He tied up his long hair to keep it from knotting up while he slept.

:Permit the old pessimist,: Need interjected. :It's not an anticlimax, child, it's that this hasn't been the climax you think it should be. We have a new tool, and nothing more. If those devices hadn't worked, we would have gone on without them. We will find the answers here, if there are answers to be found, but the teleson is not one of those answers, and that is why it feels as if what we accomplished with them is only a minor addition to our work and not a major part of it.:

"Ah." Karal's face wore a sober expression of understanding. "I see what you are saying. We're not at the end of our work, just the beginning, and it's not even close to the point where we can celebrate. Well. That's a little disappointing, but at least we haven't fallen back."

"Exactly," said Firesong. "Which is all the more reason why you should get a good night's sleep. We'll need everyone in the morning." He leveled a sober look at Karal. "Especially you. I think we'll have work enough to make you and Lyam wish there were four of you."

"I'll be glad to get back to work," Karal said, with a weak smile, and on that note, Firesong extinguished the lights with a word, and it was not long before even he was fast asleep.

Five

What is the Shin'a'in saying? Darkwind asked himself, as he watched Duke Tremane trying to make out careful plans for the time when the mage-storms finally overcame the latest efforts to stave them off. Ah, I remember. "The best plans never survive the first engagement with the enemy." How has the Empire done so well when they insist on having detailed plans for everything?

The three of them sat around a small table in the Grand Duke's personal quarters, a table currently quite full, what with papers, glasses of water, and maps strewn across it.

"What do you two think?" Duke Tremane asked, setting aside the plans he and the Valdemarans had been discussing, and leaning over the table. As he looked up at them, his gray-brown eyes seemed anxious. "My scholars haven't been able to unearth any more information about the Cataclysm, and my mages have not been able to predict anything that these mage-storms have done."

Elspeth grimaced. "I don't know that much either, I'm afraid," she replied honestly. She glanced over at Darkwind, who shrugged slightly.

"I can only tell you of the effects the Cataclysm had, according to our records and traditions," he told the Grand Duke. "Those effects were widespread and all-encompassing. All magic was disrupted, from the Ice-Wall Mountains in the north to the borders of the Haighlei Empire in the south, and in an equal distance east, and west of what are now Lake Evendim and the Dhorisha Plains. If any shields survived the Cataclysm, I am not aware of it, but I must add that the Kaled'a'in groups my people are descended from had none of the greater mages with them."

"So shields might survive?" Tremane persisted, fiddling nervously with a pen.

Oh, how he wants to have some way to get his sort of magic back! Now that this area of Hardorn was buffered from the worst effects of the mage-storms, Tremane had given orders for some judicious use of magic to take some pressure from scarce resources—mostly burnables. The barracks and headquarters were all heated and lit with mage-fires and mage-lights now, and about half the time food was cooked using mage-fires in the stoves. It did make things more comfortable, especially in the barracks, which had been heated with dried dung, and were hardly illuminated at all. But Darkwind and Elspeth could both tell how much the Grand Duke wanted to be able to use magic for all of the things he was used to; the only trouble with that idea was that it just wasn't possible to do so. For one thing, magical energy ran thin and low here; Ancar had depleted it sorely, and it would take a long time to recover. There was enough for lights and fires—but not for something more complicated, such as blind scrying, or creating mage-walls to keep the "boggles" out. For another Hardorn was only buffered; there were still slight effects, and those were increasing, a little at a time, with every passing day.

Darkwind spread his hands wide, shaking his long, silverstreaked hair back over his shoulders as he did so. "That, I cannot tell you. The people to ask would be the k'Leshya, and they are somewhat difficult to reach at the moment."

He caught Elspeth's face taking on that slightly vacant look that meant she was Mindspeaking to Gwena, and he waited for her to say something. Tremane was always forgetting that Gwena was "present" in spirit, if not sitting at the same table, and the Companion would hardly forgo a chance to remind him.

"Gwena says that she can relay an inquiry to Skif's Cymry at k'Leshya Vale, and get the answer back in a couple of days," Elspeth said, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners, telling Darkwind that she was holding back laughter. Gwena had probably said far more than that, probably about Tremane and his faulty memory, but this was a diplomatic mission and such things would not be diplomatic to relate. "There are enough mages there that surely someone will know the answer. And she says if not, then she can relay on to Florian at the Tower and see if An'desha knows anything."

Not every Companion had that long-distance capability; in fact, there were only two in all of the world as far as Darkwind knew. One was Gwena, and the other was Rolan, the Companion of the Queen's Own. They were special; "Grove-born," the Heralds called it, and claimed that instead of being physically brought into being in the normal way, they simply appeared, full-grown, out of a grove in the middle of Companion's Field. They had unusually powerful abilities in mind-magic, and through most of the history of Valdemar there had never been more than one Grove-born Companion at once. But then again, this was, by all accounts both sacred and secular, a crucial point in the history, not only of Valdemar, but of this entire part of the world, and if ever there was the need for a second Grove-born Companion, this was the time.

Tremane chewed on his lip, and ran a hand over the top of his balding head. "You know," he said cautiously. "The fact that those weapons they are looking at in the Tower survived at all might indicate that some shields held, wouldn't it? Surely there were very powerful shields on that Tower at the time of the Cataclysm."

"And it might only indicate that things at the heart of the Cataclysm had some natural protection, like things in the eye of a whirlwind," Elspeth reminded him, twisting a silver-threaded chestnut curl around one finger. "I wouldn't count on that. I also wouldn't count on any of us, singly or together, being able to replicate shields created by the mages who lived back then. These were people capable of creating living beings—gryphons, basilisks, wyrsa—and I don't know of anyone living now who would even attempt such a thing."

Darkwind cleared his throat softly to regain their attention. "To get back to your question about the effects of the original Cataclysm—afterward, the natural flows of magic energy in those areas changed completely, and we can only assume that the same thing will happen again. And as for the physical world—well, we Hawkbrothers are still healing the damage that was created in the wake of the original Storms. If you think the monsters that you've seen so far are bad, wait until there are hundreds, thousands of them, when the number of warped and changed creatures equals or exceeds the number of normal creatures." He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment as he made some quick calculations. "To give you an idea, it has taken us something like two thousand years to clear an area approximately half the size of your Empire of dangerous creatures and even more dangerous magic."

Tremane brooded over his stack of paper for a moment. "So your suggestion would be...?"

Elspeth and Darkwind exchanged another look, and it was Darkwind who replied. "If our group at the Tower can't do anything—warn everyone you can reach, create what shields and shelters you can, assume that they won't hold, and endure. Make your plans after you see what the effects are this time."

The Duke made a sour face, but did not respond. Elspeth tried some sympathy.

"Duke Tremane, I know this is difficult for you, but at least you are in command of an area in which much of the magical energy has been drained away, and which never relied on magic to get things done in the first place," she pointed out. "You can count on most buildings staying up, most bridges standing firm, count on fires heating your barracks as they always have, candles lighting the darkness, and food cooking properly in a well-made oven. Hardorn is prepared for everything except what the final Storm will do to the physical world—and in a way, you can even prepare for that, simply by knowing what the last Cataclysm did."

Tremane sighed, and rubbed one temple with his fingers. "Yes, I know this, and I also know that this is not going to be the case in the Empire. Things were falling to pieces so badly that when I mounted my raid on that Imperial warehouse complex, the men there hadn't heard from their superiors in weeks, and now—I can't even imagine the state of chaos the Empire must be in. It's just that things were difficult for us before, and the one comfort I had was that I couldn't envision them getting any worse. Now I have to, and plan for it, somehow."

Elspeth shook her head emphatically. "You can't plan for this, Tremane. All you can do is to warn people of what they might expect, and put things in place that will give you information once the worst happens. The signal-towers, for one thing. They work almost as well as Companions, and you ought to make it a priority to get them manned by people who know how to use them. You ought to make it a priority to get more of them in place if it is at all possible! If every little village had a tower, the way every village has access to a Herald, you'd be able to get help to people long before a messenger could have reached you."

Darkwind nodded. "Don't plan for specific events; doing that will inevitably prove to be an exercise in futility."

"Plan for flexibility, you mean?" The Duke considered that for a moment, and nodded. "All right, I can see that." Then he sighed. "And plan for communication, put ways of bringing in information in place while we still can. That's good, as long as the trouble spots are places where there are still people living. But if they aren't, there could be a nest of something brewing, some monstrous creatures, say, and we wouldn't know about it until the creatures had wiped out an entire town. Maybe not even then."

He rubbed his forehead, and Darkwind saw the shadow of physical pain in his eyes, in the tense muscles of his homely face. "I just wish there was a way to watch the land," he said fretfully. "I used to be able to get my mages to scry entire stretches of countryside, and that's what I'd give my arm to have working again."

Darkwind exchanged another look with Elspeth. :What do you think? This is the best opening he's ever given us.:

:If we can make him believe in earth-sense,: she replied, with some pessimism. :Still, you're right. It isn't just the best opening, it's the only opening he's ever given us.:

:You, or me?: he asked.

:Me first, just to open the subject. I'm the local royalty, the local Herald, and the local expert in mind-magic. I could be expected to know about these things, and know if the Hardornens were just making something up. You pick up if you see an opening to insert something you know.:

He folded his hands on the table in front of him as she cleared her throat. "Duke Tremane," she said, "I may have a solution to that particular problem, and oddly enough it is a part of a proposition that the Hardornens outside your domain wanted me to make to you on their behalf." She smiled apologetically. "I think you probably were anticipating that the loyalists might ask us to serve as their envoys as well as envoys for the Alliance. We promised we would put their proposal before you at an opportune time, but we promised nothing else; that seemed harmless enough."

He looked up sharply, and a little suspiciously. "A proposition? What sort of proposition?"

Elspeth bit her lip and looked down at her strong, well-muscled hands for a moment. They were hardly the hands of a pampered princess, and Darkwind had a suspicion that Tremane had noticed this. "Well... it's a rather interesting one. It seems that they've been watching how you manage things here, and you've frankly impressed them. There seems to be a general consensus that under certain very specific circumstances, they would not only be happy to arrange a truce with you, but they would be willing to offer you the crown of Hardorn itself."

He looked as if she had hit him in the back of the head with a board. It was the first time he had ever actually shown surprise. "The crown? They'd make me their King? What about their own claimants?"

"There aren't any," Darkwind said crisply. "Ancar was very thorough when it came to eliminating rivals. We were told that there weren't even any claimants on the distaff side; apparently he didn't in the least see any reason to exclude his female relatives from the purges, nor children, nor even infants. From all anyone can tell, he went back to the fourth and fifth remove of the cousins. By the time he was finished, well, you have as much right to the throne as any of the natives, that's how thin the royal connections are."

We learned most of that when we were here last, but I don't think it would be politic to mention that little trip.

Tremane didn't exactly pale, but he did look a little shocked. "And I thought that politics in the Empire were cutthroat," he murmured, as if to himself. Then he blinked, and collected himself. "So, just what are these specific circumstances you were talking about? And how will all this give me intelligence about what is happening to the land?"

Elspeth toyed with her glass of water. "This is where I am going to have to ask you to stretch your imagination a bit, Tremane," she replied. "You know that mind-magic exists, now that you've seen the members of our party use it."

He nodded cautiously.

"You also have your own Healers who use Healing magic, which is similar to, but not identical with, mind-magic," she continued, "And you know that neither are affected by the mage-storms which are disrupting what we in Valdemar call true-magic."

"I'm following you so far," Tremane said with a nod.

"'Well, as near as we can tell, there is another form of magic which is like mind-magic and like Healing-magic, but isn't exactly either of them," she told him, leaning forward earnestly. "It's called earth-magic, and it seems to have entirely to do with the land, the health of the land, and restoring that health. We think that's what hedge-wizards and earth-witches use, rather than true-magic; people who are trained in those disciplines—so they tell me—also refer to their power as earth-magic, and they call what you and Darkwind and I are accustomed to using by the name of high-magic."

:Right. So you tell him about Hawkbrother Healing Adepts while I figure out how to segue this into the earth-binding ritual.:

Darkwind nodded very slightly and caught up the conversational ball. "We Tayledras have specialized Adepts, called Healing Adepts, who have the ability to sense the poisoned places, the places where magic has made things go wrong, and fix them again," he told Tremane, who was sitting back in his chair with an odd expression that Darkwind could not read. "And if you need evidence of how well this works, it is in the fact that we have restored so much of the land to the pre-Cataclysm days. The special ability that makes this possible—Elspeth's people would call it a Gift—is something we all call the earth-sense."