:Tell her what I told you the third time she went through the calculations,: Florian advised. :That answer hasn't changed.:
"He says that as far as the Companions can tell, the solution will have to involve Hardorn because we'll have to put something in place beyond the existing breakwater. Some of them believe that we need to make a different kind of breakwater and some think we'll have to do something new, but as the storms strengthen, we will have to move the protections outward. Others just have the feeling, too vague to be a ForeSeeing, that Hardorn will be involved in finding the next solution." That was a surprising conclusion, coming from Companions, but it was a welcome one, as far as he was concerned.
And Natoli went a step further. "We might as well talk about what we've all been hinting at for the past week. Hardorn and the imperials. We need them, and we all know it, so let's start trying to figure out a way to get them without getting anyone in trouble or murdered."
:The Son of the Sun isn't going to like this, Karal.: Altra switched his tail nervously and got up from his spot on the couch to pace over to Karal.
"What about you?" Karal asked him, looking down into his intensely blue eyes.
:In the abstract, I don't object. I do not much like making allies of people who personally attacked my own charges, but in the interest of the greater good, it is probably going to be necessary. Solaris, however, will dislike such expediency.:
Yes, well, Solaris' reaction was going to extend rather beyond "dislike." But from the look on An'desha's face, the news was fairly welcome to him.
"So, what about you?" he asked his friend.
An'desha sat up. "They have snow up to the eaves, monsters rioting through blizzards, they're starving and freezing over there. Even Kerowyn isn't urging any kind of confrontation with the Imperials," he said obliquely. "You heard her this afternoon: 'Let General Winter take care of them.' And even Jarim agreed with her. She thinks that 'General Winter' is going to kill them, I bet. The trouble is, a lot of innocents are going to die, too."
"So, you're saying—?" Karal prompted.
An'desha spread his hands wide. "Haven't the people of Hardorn and the Imperials—even the guilty ones—been punished enough?"
Karal sat down at the desk that Natoli had abandoned and cupped his chin in both hands. "I know what you're saying, and I know what Florian is saying, but I've got another problem here. I want to know what the Imperials are going to do if they're desperate and feel they have nothing to lose? More assassinations? By Vkandis' Crown, what better time could they strike but when Solaris is here for a meeting? How can we keep that from happening and at the same time keep them from using an opportunity to talk to us as one to strike at us?"
"By bringing them within our protections of course," Natoli said firmly, sitting down beside An'desha in the spot that Altra had abandoned. "If they're protected from the mage-storms, that should make them less desperate. What's more, I think we need to work with their mages as well as with the ones from k'Leshya. The Masters all think we need an entirely new set of observations anyway, and a new set of outlooks on magic could be what we're missing. It worked the last time."
"All very well and good," Karal pointed out, "but to get Imperial cooperation, we have to find someone with sense about the whole situation—someone who will think rather than react when we approach him. In point of fact, it will have to be someone high enough up in their ranks that we have a chance of negotiating with their leaders. So who do we find and how do we find him? I can't exactly send in a messenger with a flag of truce!" He snorted at the very idea. "I can't exactly send anyone anywhere! I don't have any authority to do anything of the kind!"
:Perhaps just as a point of beginning we could scry and try to find someone of sense?: Florian suggested diffidently.
"Florian says we should scry to see if we can find anyone who might listen to us. How we're supposed to do that with no target and over such a huge distance, I have no notion," Karal relayed, trying not to sound as if he thought the idea was completely lunatic. "Qualifications of 'authority and good sense' seem a bit vague to hang a scrying spell on."
"Well," An'desha said slowly. "As for the distance part, there's a perfectly good way to boost the power of a scrying spell, and that's to use the Valdemar Heartstone. I'd have to ask for permission, but if I'm careful who I ask, I think I can get it. I am an Adept, if rather unpracticed. I think I can manage a simple scrying spell."
:Tell him to ask Talia to ask Elspeth and he will get permission,: Florian said with authority. :Rolan and Gwena both agree.:
Karal relayed that information. "Are you going to use the kind of spell that makes a picture anyone can see and sounds anyone can hear?" he asked hopefully. He'd always wanted to see a scrying, but Master Ulrich had never used that kind of spell.
"It's the only one I know," An'desha replied ruefully. "It takes a lot more energy than the kind that works like FarSight but I don't have a choice since I don't know that one."
"I'd prefer it even if you did have a choice," Natoli replied, tucking her hair back behind her ear. "With others watching, you have extra sets of eyes and ears to catch what you might miss."
An'desha smiled. "True. Right, well, that's how we'll have the power."
:As for a target, why don't you use the Imperial arms?: Altra said, unexpectedly. :You're not likely to find that anywhere except in the quarters of someone with authority, either on the wall or on documents—we already know from Kerowyn's spies that they've taken the arms off their uniforms.:
"Using the Imperial arms as a target—that's what Altra suggests. Can you do that?" he asked An'desha. "Then we can just observe people to see if they fit what we need."
An'desha looked blank for a moment. "I don't know why I couldn't. Given that, we can decide how we speak with our chosen contact once we actually have him."
:I'll find Talia for you.: Florian "vanished" from Karal's thoughts for a moment. Karal discovered how agreeable it was to be able to use the varied abilities of Companions; normally they would have had to go in search of Talia, but through her Companion Rolan, they were able to "ask" her to come to them in Karal's suite. They couldn't convey anything in detail, however, since Talia, unlike most Heralds, did not have Mindspeech. Rolan could only "send" an image of them and convey a sense of need.
When she finally arrived on Karal's doorstep, she wore an expression of faint annoyance overlaid with curiosity. "I hope this is more important than what I was doing," she said without preamble as Karal let her in.
"I think so, Sun's Ray," he said, calling her by her priestly title. She raised an eyebrow at that, but permitted herself to be coaxed into accepting a chair and a mug of tea. "Natoli will explain what we're up to, and I hope we haven't overstepped our authority."
Ulrich used to say that it is easier to apologize than get permission. I hope he was right.
Natoli did explain, not only their conclusions but the reasoning leading up to them. Talia listened patiently, nodding from time to time, until Natoli was finished.
"You've come perilously close to overstepping your authority," Talia told him, "but you succeeded in staying just on the right side. I'll ask Elspeth, and honestly—I think she'll agree with you. She's become more pragmatic since the mission into Hardorn after Ancar and Hulda than I gave her credit for being."
"I think it was traveling through Hardorn, seeing how the people were suffering then, and knowing that it must be worse now," An'desha suggested. "She might not be in line for the throne anymore, but you can't remove the sense of responsibility that you trained into her."
Talia smiled faintly. "One hopes. Well, let's see what can be done—and I have a suggestion for a place where you can do your scrying. Directly above the Heartstone chamber is a room that mirrors it exactly, right down to having a crystal sphere in the center of a table. You could use that, and it's shielded to a fare-thee-well. We've used it for FarSeeing in the past." She put her mug down on a side table and stood up. "I'm beginning to thin
k that the Queen ought to recognize you lot as a working entity; I'll have a word with her about that as well. You're all adults, you're all responsible, and you're all coming up with ideas, if not actual solutions. We ought to grant you enough authority that you can test out some of your ideas without constantly coming to one of us."
That last had Karal staring at her with an open mouth for a moment.
"Don't get too excited," she said, with a slight hint of a smile. "It won't be a great deal of authority. But you have a fair amount on your own, you know. You and An'desha are aliens on our soil, and do not necessarily have to answer to any authority in Valdemar for your actions so long as you don't break any major laws." She put the mug down decisively. "Now, if I'm going to catch Elspeth alone, I have to go now. I'll send you word through Rolan and Florian."
She walked to the door, and Karal opened it for her again, but just before she left, she turned and looked at him with a peculiar, penetrating stare. "You are something of a puzzle, young priest, she said at last. "You are the only person I have ever encountered that has a Companion speaking with him who was not also Chosen. I wish I knew why."
"So do I, Sun's Ray," he said fervently. "I would sleep better at night if I did."
Inside the scrying room, it was as silent as a cave. Even noises from outside were muffled to the point of vanishment. An'desha settled into his seat, now softened with a down cushion, brought by the ever-practical Natoli who could not see any reason why the four of them needed to get numb behinds from the hard benches when there were plenty of cushions kicking around in the Palace storerooms. The others took their places at equal distances around the table—in Altra's case, on the table, licking his back fur—and waited expectantly for him to begin the spell.
Their initial few attempts had ended in nothing more exciting than warehouses and a few barracks, for the Imperials might have taken their embroidered arms from the tunics of their uniforms, but they still had their battle banners displayed prominently in their barracks and the Imperial mark burned into the sides of crates. One or two had even begun murals including the arms on the walls as well. The trouble with this spell was that once it was set on a target, you couldn't move the point-of-view more than a foot or two from the target without starting over, and he couldn't do that more than two or three times a day. The spell might take most of its energy from the Heartstone, but it still required his personal power to control it.
"You know—I've got an idea. You might try the arms in the form of a seal," Natoli said after some thought. "That might at least get you a place where we can see a clerk in the headquarters. Then you can shift your target to him and set the spell again; sooner or later he's bound to go to someone in authority."
An'desha made a gesture of helplessness. "That sounds like as good an idea as any; we certainly haven't made any other progress."
"We wouldn't say that," Karal objected, speaking for both himself and Altra. "You found Shonar and the Imperial Army—and you didn't catch on to something over in the Empire itself. That's not bad for not having a specific target."
An'desha smiled faintly, and flexed his hands to warm up the muscles before he placed them palm-down on the table in front of him. He stared at a point a little above the crystal ball in the center of the table. and reached for the weighty power seething below him, embodied in the Heartstone of Valdemar.
There was no way of describing just how it felt to him, to seize this incredible energy, a force both ordered and chaotic, and with a rudimentary consciousness of its own. Were other Heartstones like this one? If so, no wonder Falconsbane had wanted to learn the secrets of constructing them! Nodes were powerful, even deadly, but this Heartstone was a hundred times more powerful than any node he had ever encountered. Linking himself in with it was similar to walking the Moonpaths, in that he found himself "somewhere else"; this "somewhere," however, was a crystalline structure thrumming with ordered power. Once there, he was possessed of the strength to do just about anything he chose, if only his control could hold up.
That was the real key, control, and it was what required so much of his own strength. If I were riding an unbroken war steed that happened to like me, and had decided to permit me to sit on her back, it might be like this. There is a sense that at any moment I might be thrown and trampled. "Ordered" does not mean "tame."
Once he had the reins of power in his hands, he dropped his gaze into the crystal itself, setting the patterns and sigils written only in the invisible fire of magic to burn about it. He knew the moment it was all complete; the ring of power fused into an unbroken whole, and the "setting" sat empty, waiting for the target object.
This was the only purely mental part of the spell; he concentrated on the Imperial arms in the form of a wax impression, a seal such as he had often seen on other documents of importance. This is what you want, he silently told the spell as he set that image within it. Go and find it, and bring us the picture of where it is.
Distance meant very little to this spell if it had the power it needed to reach as far as it had to. He felt the spell straining to be off, a restive hound with the quarry in view, pulling at the leash.
He let it go, and immediately sensed power flowing from the Heartstone, through him, and into the set-spell. Oh, it was sweet. Now all he had to do was control the flow of power so that it was even, and sit back and watch the crystal with the others.
A red blur formed in the heart of the crystal, transparent, but three-dimensional. It could have been a reflection of something on the table, or something one of them was wearing; except that they all saw it, for they all leaned forward at the same time.
The haze of red solidified, the blurring focused, and the indistinct image became a clear, sharp picture, a blob of red sealing wax, centered by the now all-too-familiar arms of the Eastern Empire. The image showed him nothing more, because that was all that the spell had been set for; it did not even show the document the seal was on.
That was just fine, for now that he had his target, he could widen the parameters of the spell.
He seized more power from the Heartstone and wove it into new patterns, ones that told the spell to broaden its "gaze" and to open its "ears." Round about the crystal he set the new patterns, weaving them in and out of the old ones, until once again the energies fused into a whole.
The image changed; the blob of red wax grew smaller, down to a mere pinpoint, as it seemed to recede into the middle distance. It became a dot of red on a sheet of yellow-brown parchment; the document lay on a desk, on top of a stack of similar documents. Behind the desk sat a man in a sober and severely cut tunic and trews of that no-nonsense styling that says "military," both of which had the familiar look of the Imperial uniform. The desk itself was the only piece of furniture in a very small room, lit by a single lantern suspended from a chain above the desk. The top of the desk was littered with papers, inkwells, and all the paraphernalia of a clerk.
"Yes," Karal hissed under his breath. An'desha did not bother with self-congratulations; this part of the spell manipulation was too delicate. He rotated his viewpoint, slowly, taking it down and around until at last his "eyes" were in the middle of the desktop, staring up at the clerk working so diligently there.
There was no sound but the scratching of the clerk's pen and the hiss of his breathing—and, occasionally, a sniff as he took a moment to rub his nose with the back of his hand. An'desha stared intently into his surprisingly young face, a very earnest face, and one showing a fierce concentration on the work at hand. It was not a particularly memorable face for all that it was young; the clerk was very much of a "type." His brown hair was cut short, and from the precision of the style, An'desha guessed it was probably a regulation haircut. His brown eyes were neither very large nor very small, neither deepset nor bulging, neither far apart nor set too near the bridge of the nose. His forehead was not too broad or too narrow. His cheekbones were neither prominent nor flat nor buried in fat. His nose was neither hawklike nor pugged, neither
thin nor spread, absolutely average in length and shape. His mouth was neither thin nor generous, his chin neither square nor pointed, rounded nor prominent. It would have been very difficult to pick him out in a crowd, but he did have one tiny scar crossing his left eyebrow and another marring the otherwise average chin. An'desha concentrated fiercely on those two flaws, branding the man's face in his mind.
Once he was sure he had the clerk as firmly in his mind as possible, he broke the spell, shattering the brittle energies with a single burst of power. He sagged down on the table for a moment as the shattered remains dissipated; feeling his own strength melting away with it.
Natoli and Karal were both ready for that moment; instantly they were each at his elbows, Natoli with a cup of something sweet and hot, Karal with cheese and bread. The moment of weakness did not last long. He had the Heartstone to draw on, after all, and he was soon sitting up again and restoring his physical strength while his magical energies slowly rose to near the level they had been when he began.
"Looks to me as if we got an Imperial clerk, one with enough status to handle important documents," Karal said, as An'desha drank the restorative brew and nibbled on the cheese.
"I hope so," An'desha said, doubt now creeping into his mind. "I don't know about that office, though. Would someone with any status be shoved away into that cramped little closet?"
But Karal only laughed. "Oh, certainly," he said, with the surety of one who has been a clerk himself. "First of all, this man wasn't wearing a heavy cloak or even a particularly heavy tunic—that means wherever he is it's warm. We know that Shonar didn't have a Great Lord, so the manor that the Imperials took over isn't going to be huge—and the Commander has consolidated all of his officers there. As many of them as can will be in the manor, not the barracks. His mages are probably in there, too. That's a lot of people to be crowded into one smallish manor house; any clerk that has his own office, and a warm office at that, must be of a fairly high rank."
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