Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  With that, she chuckled. "I would be verrry sssurrrprrrisssed if you had," she rumbled smoothly. "But I think you will enjoy it."

  Treyvan appeared from above, backwinging gracefully to a landing beside the two of them. "I have been aloft, and therrre isss a patterrrn, I think," he said cheerfully. "Ssso—let usss sssee if I am brrrilliant, or deluded!" Caught up in his excitement, which radiated from him like warm sunshine, Karal snapped the hooks of the other side of the net onto the male gryphon's harness, and got into the basket, suddenly eager to be off. He arranged his stylus and waxboard, and didn't even think about being afraid until they were several stories above the ground, skimming the treetops.

  And at that point, he was too caught up in the incredible feeling of power and freedom to be frightened.

  Like most people he knew, he'd had dreams of flying before, but it had never been like this. He was buffeted by wind from all directions—from the backwash of both gryphons' wings, and the maelstrom of their passage. They were moving much faster than the fastest horse he had ever ridden. He clung to the edge of the basket—which did not tip over, even when he dared to lean out to look straight down—and stared at the city below.

  Was this how the gryphons always saw things? From this vantage, the city took on an entirely new look. Patterns emerged that he would not have seen from below. Now he could judge what houses were built about the same time from the way the roofs were constructed, for instance. Now he could tell that someone who had an otherwise impressive house might be either very careless or falling on hard times by the dilapidated state of what did not show from the street level. People in the poorer sections used every bit of space, too, which was not the case with those who were better off; roofs in the poorest parts of town held plants, vegetables grown in carefully-tended tubs of soil, and were strung with lines for hanging out wash. People gathered up there, women and children mostly, who gaped and pointed at him and the gryphons when they passed overhead. Children stopped in their games, and one woman even shrieked and flung her wet laundry over her head to hide.

  A moment later, they were over a district of warehouses—and a moment after that, they were outside the city walls.

  The gryphons strained for altitude, and climbed higher into the cloud-strewn sky. Karal watched those clouds worriedly—this would be a very bad time for a lightning storm to blow up! But, even if he were struck from the skies, he would die knowing what it felt like to be so close to Vkandis....

  "Look," Hydona called, over the thunder of her own wings. "Down therrre. That isss the firrrssst of the sssignsss."

  Karal looked down obediently and saw exactly what she was talking about. Right in the middle of a green field was a circular space that held black sand. Sheep eyed it dubiously.

  "We need morrre height to sssee the patterrn," Treyvan called back. She nodded and strained upward.

  The sheep dwindled into white toys, then into clots of wool, then into small dots on the green field. The air got colder and thinner—not even while going through high mountain passes had Karal been this high up! His ears and nose were numb, and his eardrums popped again and again as they surged higher. Treyvan pointed, and Karal followed the direction of his talon.

  A thrill of excitement touched him. There was a pattern! Beyond the circle of black sand, there was another discoloration in the middle of a field of grain, a place that appeared to be circular as well. And beyond that, a mere blot of color in line with the first two, there seemed to be a third at about the same distance as the interval between the first and second.

  "Go down!" he shouted to Treyvan. "Land next to the sand-circle! I'll make some notes and take a sample; we'll go on to the next one and do the same. We'll measure that distance, and see if there really is a third and what the distance is to it—"

  "And if therrre isss a fourrrth, and a fifth," Hydona added. "Good idea, Karrral!"

  They dropped a lot faster than they had climbed. Karal clamped both hands firmly around the front of the basket, but felt like he would be better served by clutching at his stomach. Still, the basket landed with a controlled bump that rattled Karal's teeth but did no other damage. He hopped out and measured the circle of sand by pacing it, folded a bit of paper into a cone and scooped up a sample, then sketched and described the circle. There didn't seem to be anything alive in it; he stirred the center of it with a stick and came up with nothing but fine, black sand, completely uniform in makeup and texture. The sheep watched him with vague alarm on their silly faces but couldn't make up their minds whether to flee or stand. They were more afraid of him than they were of the gryphons and shied sideways, bleating each time he made a move toward them.

  The gryphons watched, panting, sunlight glinting off their feathers. He made sure to take long enough at his tasks to allow the gryphons enough time to catch their breath.

  "All right," he said, when he couldn't think of anything else useful to measure. "Are you ready?"

  Treyvan nodded, and he climbed back into the basket. The takeoff was a little slower this time; with only sheep to impress, Treyvan didn't seem to be in as much of a hurry.

  The next spot was, indeed, a circle—but this time, it wasn't of sand. This spot contained a short, wiry grass of an odd yellow-green; the soil beneath it was hard and full of reddish clay, so that the earth itself looked red. There were dead insects in this patch, but they didn't look any different from the ones Karal was familiar with. Nevertheless, he took a sample of the earth, the grass, and a little black beetle. Maybe someone else could make something of this.

  The third circle held something quite unexpected; a section of ground that could have come from a Karsite meadow. The ground was exactly right; gray and full of stones. The plants were that tough gorse and mountain grass that only goats could eat, and in one side of the circle was a patch of kitten-paw flowers that Karal knew would not grow in Valdemar. He knew that because they were the common Karsite remedy for headache, and when he had asked for some, the Healers hadn't a clue what he was talking about.

  Dutifully, he sampled this as well. He also took every kitten-paw bunch that was handy because he felt there would be a lot of headaches in his immediate future. He added notes and observations on the waxboard, and each page of paper. The distance between the first and second circles and the second and third was precisely equal.

  They continued to follow a line of disturbances on away from Haven into the north; not all of the things they found were as obvious as those circles of alien earth. Several times they actually had to land to find that there was a transplant, for it was so similar to what surrounded it that only the neat circular cut-line around it betrayed that it was there. And once, they found, not a circle of transplanted soil, but a circle of fused sand.

  Only once had Karal ever seen anything like this, and that had been as a child, in a place where lightning had struck sandy loam. That had left a mark about the size of his hand; this was a circle of blackened, cracked black glass, mottled and full of bubbles and irregularities, that was easily the size of a freight wagon. The three of them stared at the lumpy glass, and Karal wondered if the gryphons felt the same cold dread that he did. Something had certainly struck here with terrible force. What if it had struck within the city limits?

  What if, somewhere out there, in Valdemar, Karse, or Rethwellan, it had struck within a populated area? What if it struck his father's inn, or Sunhame?

  "Therrre werrre weaponsss that did damage like that in the old daysss," Hydona said softly. "Terrrible weaponsss, in the daysss of Ssskandrrranon. The Grrreat Adeptsss usssed them. We had hoped neverrr to sssee sssuch again in the life-timesss of ourrr childrrren."

  Weapons? It had not occurred to him that such a thing could be a weapon. What could possibly guard against such a thing?

  But remember the Sunlord; Vkandis can strike like this. Surely Karse, at least, is safe. Surely He can protect His people. But somehow, with this before him, it was hard to have faith that Vkandis would protect His people. Thi
s seemed too random, like a cosmic event, and even Vkandis Sunlord was said to be a part of a greater universe.

  "We have enough, I think," Treyvan said in a louder voice, shaking himself as if to shake the terrible thought from his mind. "It isss time to rrreturrrn."

  Obediently, if more than a little disturbed, Karal climbed back into the basket. But he was much too preoccupied with the thoughts called up by that circle of crackled glass to take any pleasure in the return flight.

  As night fell, the mages gathered again to compare their notes in the Council Chamber, and once again, An'desha prevailed on Firesong to let him come along. To his relief, Firesong had accepted his explanation of how he and Karal had met with outward calm. Pointing out that it was Talia who had introduced them seemed to make the difference; An'desha had noted more than once that Firesong, who rarely gave deference to anyone, gave an immense measure of respect to Lady Talia.

  That was just as well; An'desha had a lot more on his mind than explaining a simple friendship to his lover. The mage-storm's first bluster had stirred something up from out of Falconsbane's deepest and oldest memories, and he was still trying to sort it out.

  First and foremost, he was certain, as he had never before been certain of anything, that this was what both the Avatars and his seizures of fear had been warning him about. Secondly, he knew that a part of him recognized just what the mage-storm really was—or rather, what it was a symptom of.

  There was a version of Falconsbane who called himself "Ma'ar" who was somehow involved with that memory, though without actually probing after it, he could not be sure just what that involvement was.

  When Firesong went out with Darkwind to do a bondbird aerial sweep to the south, An'desha stayed behind in the reassuring confines of the tiny Vale. Although he would have preferred to have Karal to talk him through this, he had approached Karal's master, the Karsite Priest Ulrich, as a substitute to help him through another search through those dreadful memories. When Ulrich agreed, the Priest suggested his own quarters as the best place for such a search, and An'desha had taken the suggestion with relief. Then he had taken his courage in both hands, just as he had done when he had tricked Falconsbane into walking out into the trap that meant his death, and plunged into a trance to trace back the memory.

  It had taken a long time, and when he emerged from it, he was too shaken by the experience to say anything. Ulrich did not seem in a hurry to make him speak, though; the Priest just sat there with him, pressing a cup of sweet tea on him, letting him take his own time in recovering.

  But by the time An'desha felt ready to talk, Firesong came to tell Ulrich that the rest of the mages had already gathered.

  "I should be there, too," An'desha said, as steadily as he could, and felt a little glow of warmth at Firesong's glance of approval.

  He's been trying for so long to get me to accept my powers and responsibilities... I suppose this makes him feel very good. In spite of the soul-churning effect of wandering through the miasma of Falconsbane's evil memories, An'desha realized that it made him feel rather good, too. Shouldering the burden—at least at the moment—was actually less onerous than anticipating and dreading the need to shoulder it. It made him feel the way he did when the Avatars had come to him—that tremulous exultation, the sense of being a tiny but bright light in a great expanse of darkness. He accepted what he must do.

  He followed the others into the Council Chamber again, and waited with them while pages went around the room lighting the lanterns set into the plaster-ornamented walls. The Court Artist, who had apparently been sitting there and sketching some of the mages under pretense of recording a historical event, was sent packing out of the room by a scowl from Daren. Karal was there, sitting with the gryphons this time, bearing signs of windburn and chapped lips. His friend gave him a shaky smile. He seemed very disturbed by something, and somehow An'desha doubted that it had teen the flying that had set that expression on his face.

  Karal is brave, braver than I am. He wouldn't be afraid of flying. Something else has frightened him.

  "Let Karrral ssspeak forrr the thrrree of usss," said Treyvan, when all the shuffling of papers and settling into seats was done. The great gryphon raised his head into the light, and his eyes glinted with reflections. "We have dissscusssed thisss, and he hasss the feelingsss of all three of usss."

  Karal cleared his throat self-consciously as all eyes turned toward him. "Well, what we basically discovered, is that there is a regular pattern to the disturbances, the ones that we saw, anyway. They are all the same size, the same distance apart, and in a straight line. We went as far as we could before turning back, and we didn't see an end to them. Most of them are—transplants, I suppose you would say. They are circles of foreign soil; they look as if a gardener cut circles of land and replaced them with circles of land from somewhere else. Most of them were so similar to Valdemaran soil that if we hadn't been looking for signs of disturbance we wouldn't have spotted anything wrong. Some were from places I couldn't recognize—the one nearest the city going directly north from the Palace is of black sand, for instance. There was one piece that I would swear was right out of a mountain meadow in Karse; it even contained an herb I know grows only there. I took samples from all of them. But one—there was one at the end that was different. That strange one—it was fused sand, like badly-made glass." He swallowed, hard. "I—it would be very terrible if whatever did that has done it somewhere where there are people."

  "Did you see any of the strange animals some people have described?" Elspeth asked.

  Karal shook his head. "No, nothing that didn't seem quite normal, just out of place where we found it."

  "I found some of the strange animals, and even a bird," Darkwind spoke up. "Or rather, Vree found them and caught them. I had the impression that the disturbances were not regular and not in a pattern, but it hadn't occurred to me that many of them would simply look just like the land around them."

  An'desha listened with a sinking heart. Oh, this sounded far too much like that ancient memory for his satisfaction! I had hoped they would prove me wrong, but they are only proving me more and more right!

  An'desha simply sat and absorbed it all, unable to garner the will to speak. Not just yet, anyway.

  Darkwind described the creatures that he had caught and brought back; the other mages who had gone in other directions added their observations. Karal offered more comments of his own, calmly, though with obvious deference to the others. He wouldn't venture any conclusions, but based on his own figures and those of the rest, he began to plot the rest of the observations on a larger map of the land around Haven. Karal's relative self-assurance—and his and Ulrich's occasional glances of encouragement—finally gave An'desha the courage to speak up in a moment of silence.

  "You all know—what, who I was," he said softly, his eyes fixed on a spot in the middle of the table.

  Every eye in the place turned toward him. Karal stopped writing.

  "I still have Mornelith Falconsbane's memories," he went on, haltingly. "And those of the lives he led before he was Falconsbane. I knew this mage-storm when it struck. I recognized it somehow, out of those memories, though I did not know what it was, exactly, nor how I recognized it." He swallowed; his throat and mouth felt terribly dry, and his hands were cold. "Please—please, do not think me crazy. What I say is true, as true as I can say it. With the help of Master Ulrich, I—I sought answers to that recognition. I believe I know what this storm was, what caused it, and even why."

  The silence was so thick he heard the hiss of the lantern flames behind him. "Please be patient with me—this was the oldest memory I have ever touched, possibly the oldest that Falconsbane himself had. It came from a time when Falconsbane was a mage and a king called Ma'ar."

  The gryphons hissed as one, hackles and crest-feathers smoothed flat to their heads, and sat straight up on their haunches. No one else moved.

  "The memory of a storm like this one—it came after a Gate was dest
royed. Not a temporary Gate like we know, but a permanent Gate—one that was held ready to be opened at any moment. It was a small storm, and the effects were limited, but they were very like what you have been describing here." He swallowed again; what followed had been very, very hard to cope with, even at the remove of several hundreds, if not thousands, of years. "But when Ma'ar—died—it was with the knowledge that his realm, and that of his enemy, were both about to fall to a suicidal cataclysm. Both realms, rich in magic, built with magic, were about to have every spell within them broken within moments of his death. Many permanent Gates, shields, devices, all—and all at once. He died before he himself experienced that cataclysm, but the effects would have been very like those we are seeing now, but much, much worse, lasting for days, and traveling across continents."

  "Continents?" someone asked. An'desha nodded.

  "Hence, that it is called 'the Cataclysm' in the old texts," Ulrich murmured as if to himself.

  "But that wasss verrry long ago," Hydona said, puzzled. "What hasss that to do with usss?"

  He took another deep breath. This was even harder to speak of, but for a different reason. "I do not often tell of this, but when I was entrapped within my body by Falconsbane, I was aided by two—presences." Please, oh please, do not let them doubt my sanity!

  "Avatars of the Star-Eyed, he means," Firesong interjected, and reached under the table to squeeze his hand encouragingly. "The blade Need spoke to me of these, more than once. I believe they were what they claimed to be and so does she; after all, some of you saw them when they unmade both Nyara and An'desha, giving them back more human likenesses."

  "An'desha has told me of these Avatars," Karal spoke up. "I believe them to be true Visitations also."

  An'desha cleared his throat self-consciously, feeling his ears and neck growing hot with a flush he could not control. "They warned me then, several times, that there was something terrible in the future. Something that threatened not only Valdemar alone, but all our lands. I thought it was only Falconsbane, but I continued to have terrible dreams, and spells of great fear after he was gone. Now that this mage-storm has come upon us and I have searched out that old memory, I—I have—" he shook his head. "I am no great mage, for all the potential power that Firesong thinks I hold, but there are some things that are now making dreadful sense to me. The Avatars spoke to me once of 'power and chaos echoing back across time.' I thought that meant Falconsbane, but now I do not think so. I have the memory of how much power lay in all those spells that were released in that long-ago time of the Mage Wars. Ma'ar believed in his last moments that it was more than the fabric of the world could bear, to have it all released in a single moment—and as importantly, to have two such centers of power interacting with each other. I think that what happened then is about to echo back upon us now—but in reverse of the original. I think that the storm we just experienced is only the warning."