Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  The mage-storms had begun again. Hints of their building power were beginning to overcome the Counter-Storm. They were not strong enough yet to cause any problems, but it was only a matter of time.

  Darkwind understood.

  This was the first sign of the coming Final Storm, and their respite before it struck would be measured in, at best, weeks. Their survival was in doubt, and even if they did survive, whether they would prosper afterward was in deep question. There were hundreds of variables, and just as many major decisions. There were key uses of power and defense, solving of mysteries and understanding of connections. Like each segment in a spiderweb, the failure of any of those elements could collapse it all, and cost every one involved—everything.

  Nine

  "What is wrong with your friend Firesong?" Lyam asked Karal in a whisper, as Firesong went off to a remote corner of the Tower to brood—or as he called it, "meditate"—for the second time that day. "The others are all working together over the notes for the cube-maze, but he keeps going off by himself, he says to think. Is that usual for him? Is he ill, do you think? Or have the frustrations begun to weigh upon his soul?"

  "I'm not sure," Karal replied, although this behavior of Firesong's wasn't particularly news to him. Living together as closely as they all were, it, wasn't possible for any of them to deviate from normal behavior without the others noticing. And Firesong was certainly acting oddly—though not with that selfish oddness that made him so dangerous before.

  There were several signs that this bout of solitary brooding was far different than the last. For one thing, Aya kept cuddling close to him, tucking his head up under Firesong's chin while Firesong held him and scratched gently under his wings, and it had been Aya's avoidance of his bondmate that had been one sign that his temper and thoughts were tending in dangerous directions. He wasn't tinkering with odd magics either; he was sitting in out-of-the-way corners, staring into space, as if Firesong sought the privacy in his mind that he could not get in the Tower. But those bursts of "meditation" always seemed to end in a sharp and thoughtful glance at Karal, and given some of the past difficulties between them, that didn't make Karal feel entirely easy about his possible thoughts.

  "Huh," Lyam said, and scratched the top of his head with a stubby, ink-stained talon. "Well, he doesn't seem to be getting much done, an he's giving me collywobbles with the way he just sits and stares. If he's gotten into a blue funk, maybe one of you ought to shake him out of it."

  Karal made a face. "I'm not sure any of us want to shake Firesong out of anything, but I suppose it can't hurt if I talk to him. If there's a problem, maybe Silverfox could help him with it. or something. Or maybe it's a problem he doesn't want to get Silverfox involved with, and maybe I could help him." He made a face. "After all, I'm supposed to be a priest, and that's the sort of thing that priests are supposed to do, right?"

  Having said that, he knew he had talked himself into the position where he was going to have to do something about the situation. Lyam nodded encouragingly to him at that last statement, so before he could find a reason to put it off, he got to his feet and trailed off after Firesong.

  Altra invited himself along, sauntering casually at Karal's heels. As Karal glanced inquisitively down at him, Altra blinked guileless blue eyes at him. :I thought I'd come along, too, just in case you needed me,: the Firecat said idly. Karal did not ask "for what?" since he knew the answer already. There wasn't a great deal that Altra couldn't shield him against, if Firesong turned angry or dangerous, or both.

  He found the Adept in the chamber containing one of the mysterious contrivances (one made of wire, odd plates of some sparkling material, and gemstones) that looked far too delicate to warrant the label of "weapon." Aya was with him, cuddling inside his jacket. Aya's long tail trailed comically down from beneath the hem, as if the cascade of feathers belonged to Firesong. The Adept stared at the softly glowing stones with an intense look on his face. He turned to face the entrance when he heard Karal's deliberate footstep, but he did not seem particularly surprised to see the Karsite.

  Karal approached him gingerly, but there was nothing in Firesong's slight smile to indicate anything other than welcome. As he edged around the wire-sculpture weapon, Karal tried to think of a lateral approach to the subject, and failed to come up with a good one. So he decided to go straight to the heart of the matter, and make no attempt at being clever.

  "You've been wandering off by yourself for the last couple of days, and we're a little concerned about you," he said bluntly. "It didn't seem right to go behind your back and pester Silverfox to see if you were all right, so I decided to ask you directly. Is there anything wrong?"

  "Other than everything?" Firesong asked archly. "We are in a very precarious position here, you know."

  "Well, yes, but—" Karal fumbled. "I mean—"

  "There's nothing wrong, or rather, nothing wrong with me, Karal," Firesong interrupted, with a smile for his bondbird, as Aya stuck his head out of the front of the Adept's jacket, saw who it was that Firesong was talking to, and tucked himself back inside. "But I'm glad you came to find out, because I have a few questions that really concern only you. Here, sit." He patted the floor beside him, and Karal lowered himself down warily. "Karal, Karse and Valdemar fought a generations-long war, and I can understand that anyone from Karse might feel very negative about certain figures of Valdemaran history, but you are bright enough to reason things through for yourself and not just take everything you are told in without ever examining it. So, given that, here's a history question; what do you know and what do you think about Herald-mage Vanyel Ashkevron?"

  Karal stared at him, a bit confused by the abrupt change of subject, for the initial question Karal had asked about Firesong had nothing whatsoever to do with a figure of ancient history like Vanyel Ashkevron.

  But it was a very interesting question, given all of the changes Karal's own life and thoughts had been going through. It might, on the surface, seem like the question had no relevance in any way to the situation in the Tower, but he knew Firesong better than that, and Firesong had to have an ultimate purpose in asking it.

  "I'm going to have to think aloud, so bear with me," Karal said, finally. "As you probably guessed, according to our history Vanyel Demonrider was absolutely the epitome of everything that was terrible about Valdemar. Every child in Karse used to be told that if he was bad, Vanyel would come and carry him off. He was a Herald, a rider of a demon-horse, and the implacable enemy of all Karse stood for. He was a mage, which was anathema, of course, and he had the audacity to be a very powerful mage, one who could turn back the demons that the most highly skilled Priest-mages could raise, which made him even worse. And if that wasn't bad enough, it is said by some chroniclers of the time that he could break the compulsions that the Priests put on their demons and send them back against their own summoners, which made him the King of the Demons so far as our people were concerned."

  "That's your history," Firesong replied, watching Karal with peculiar intensity. "How do you feel about it?"

  "I'm getting to that." Karal rubbed the back of his own neck, trying to sort out his thoughts as he loosened tight muscles. "I do think it's supremely ironic that the worst accusations about Vanyel have to do with him riding a demon-horse and being a mage, when our own Priests were mages who summoned demons and controlled them."

  Firesong's sardonic smile had a note of approval in it. "No one has ever dared to claim that the causes of warfare and the sources of prejudice are ever rational." He scratched Aya under the chin, and was rewarded by a particularly adorable chirrup. "And religious fervor is often used as an excuse for a great many socially unacceptable behaviors."

  "That's religion as an excuse. Sometimes it seems to me that when religious fervor enters the mind, the wits pack up entirely and fly out the ear," Karal replied a bit sourly. "But worst of all is when powerful, ruthless people use the religious fervor of others to further their own greed."

  Aya p
oked his head out of the jacket again, as if he found what Karal was saying very interesting. Altra settled himself at Karal's feet, and there was nothing in the Firecat's demeanor to make Karal think his own religious guide disapproved of anything he had said so far.

  "All that is true in my experience." Firesong replied with one of his brilliant, perfect smiles. "Though I'm not that much older than you. So, what do you think Vanyel was really like?"

  Karal shrugged. "Of course, I am sure that he must be a very great hero to the Valdemarans; the fact that my people considered him to be such an evil enemy would make that a simple conclusion to come to. Given that he was fighting what I now know to have been very power-hungry and entirely amoral men, most notably one of the worst Sons of the Sun we ever had in all our history, I suppose that he was only doing his duty to protect his people against the rapacious land grabbing of mine. I—cannot say that I like that thought. It fills me with shame, in fact." He paused, and a final thought floated to the surface, one that seemed to define the situation. "I can only say that not even his enemies in Karse ever tried to claim that he led any armies over the border into our land, and the same cannot be said of the Karsite commanders. Now, I can't pretend to tell who was right and who was wrong in those areas where both sides claimed to have been attacked first, or were provoked into attacking, or where magic, sabotage, and assassination were allegedly employed, but I can tell that the Valdemarans never took armies into Karse, but my people certainly waged war up into Valdemar."

  "Very even-handed," Firesong replied approvingly. "No side is always in the right. Now, we'll change the subject again. I need a religious opinion from you. What do the Sun-priests have to say about ghosts?"

  "As in, what?" he asked. "Unquiet dead? Haunts? Spirits who return to guide?"

  "All of those," Firesong said, making a general gesture. "Some religions deny that any such manifestations exist, and some religions are written around them as a form of ancestor worship. What does the Writ of Vkandis say?"

  "The Writ says very little." He frowned, trying to think of what it did say. "Now that I come to think of it, what it does say is rather interesting. According to the Writ, no one who is of the Faith, whether the purest soul or the blackest, could possibly become a ghost. Anyone born or brought into the Faith will be taken before Vkandis and judged—'sorted' is the word used in the Writ. And the good shall be sorted from the evil; no spirit shall escape the sorting. The evil will be cast into darkness and great despair, into fear and pain, to repeat their errors until they have learned to love and serve the Light of Vkandis. And the good shall be gathered up into the rich meadows of Heaven, to sing His praises in the everlasting rays, to drink the sweet waters and bask forevermore in the Glory of the Sun. That's the actual quote. There's a great deal more about who shall become what rank of angelic spirit, and what each kind does, but I have a suspicion that all of that is a clerkly conceit. I've got an earlier version of the Writ that doesn't have any of those lists in it."

  "Some people even have to have their afterlife ranked, arranged, and organized," Firesong chuckled. "I hate to say this, but being gathered up to lie in a meadow sunbathing and singing for all eternity is not my idea of a perfect afterlife. I should be screamingly bored within the first afternoon."

  Karal laughed. "Maybe not for you, but think about the poor shepherds who were the first Prophets, living in the cold, damp hills of Karse, with rain and fog and damn poor grazing most of the time."

  "I suppose for them, rich meadows and sun forever would be paradise, wouldn't it?" Firesong raised his eyebrows. "All right, so Karsites can't become ghosts—but what about other people?"

  "Well, that's not in the Writ. But there is a tradition that the unblessed dead become the hungry, vengeful ghosts who roam the night. That's why most Karsites won't venture out after dark without a Priest to secure their safety." But Firesong's question had asked about more than mere Karsite tradition, it had been about what Karal himself thought. "As a Priest, I can exorcise ghosts, in theory. I'm supposed to be able to send any unblessed spirit to the sorting even if they aren't of the Faith, if they want to go. The Writ is kind of vague about what happens to heathen who have the misfortune to worship someone besides Vkandis. Most people assume that they'll be sent to eternal punishment, even if they are good people, but the Writ really doesn't say that, it just says that they will be sorted and sent to 'their places.' It doesn't say what those places are. For all I know, those places could be right here on earth."

  Tre'valen and Dawnfire are ghosts of a kind, and if what Lo'isha and An'desha have been saying is true, then some of the Kal'enedral are ghosts, too. Or if they aren't ghosts, they certainly aren't physically alive the way Florian and Altra are. So there's no reason why Kal'enel couldn't have "sorted" them Herself, and decreed that their "place" was here.

  "Well, what about the Avatars?" Firesong asked, echoing his thoughts. "Do they count as ghosts?"

  "If they aren't, I wouldn't know what else to call them," Karal admitted. "And even if they aren't 'blessed' in the Karsite sense, they are anything but evil or hungry. They certainly aren't vengeful either, so there's no reason for me to interfere with whatever they are doing." He thought a bit harder. "The thing about exorcism is that if you want to be exact about it, there are two kinds. One kind just throws the ghost out of whatever it's possessing and bars it from coming back—it can still go possess something else somewhere else. The other kind blesses the ghost, opens a path for it so it can see where it's supposed to be going, and gives it some help to break the last bonds with the world and send it on its way if it's ready. But it has to be ready. Most Priests combine both kinds, hoping that once the spirit is cast out, it will see the Light and realize it shouldn't be here, but I've also seen reports about spirits that just seemed confused about the fact that they were dead, and in that case, the Priest only used the second kind of exorcism."

  "All very well, but suppose you were to see something that you knew was a ghost—not an Avatar, or anything obviously under the direction of anyone's god. What would you do about that?" Firesong asked. "Would you feel that you had to do something about it?"

  It was a good question. According to some Priests, he would have to try exorcising anything that looked or acted like a ghost, but that would include the Kal'enedral and the Avatars, and he dashed well knew that he wasn't going to even breathe the word "exorcism" around them! "Personally, I suppose I would try to exorcise anything that was harmful, send on anything that was ready, and leave everything else alone."

  He still didn't see what relevance any of this had to their current situation, but presumably Firesong had some idea where he was going with all of this.

  Firesong appeared to make up his mind about something, for his expression became a bit more animated and less contemplative. "Look," he said, "I've been asking you all these questions because I need your help, yours and Altra's, and there are some religious problems involved. I made the—acquaintance—of some real ghosts, and you wouldn't mistake them for anything else. One of them is an ancestor of mine. Physically, they're bound to a place up north, right up at the northern border of Valdemar."

  Oh, no... he must be afraid that when the Final Storm hits, these ghosts of his are going to be destroyed or hurt in some way. Karal interrupted him. "Firesong, I hope you weren't planning on asking me to exorcise them. I mean, I'm sorry that one of your ancestors is physically bound to the earth, and if I could, I would be glad to help him, but I don't think it's possible. I told you, all I would be able to do without the spirits being ready, is to force them out of the place they were bound to. Even so, I doubt I could do anything for them at such a great distance."

  Now it was Firesong's turn to interrupt him. "No, Karal, that was not what I had in mind!" he exclaimed, but he seemed more amused at the conclusion that Karal had leaped to than annoyed. "Hear me out. An'desha, Sejanes, and I all agree that we simply need more mages here at the Tower, powerful mages, and we're just not going to get
them here to us in time. We need Adepts at the least, and every Adept within physical range of the Tower is needed right where he is. We can't build Gates to bring in human or nonhuman Adepts from farther away, and Altra can't bring in anyone mortal—but what about ghosts?"

  Ghosts. One of Firesong's ancestors. North of Valdemar. And an Adept. The trend of the questions suddenly formed into a pattern, and Karal stared at him in mingled horror and fascination. "This ghost—this ancestor—it wouldn't be Vanyel Ashkevron, would it?" he asked, his voice trembling in spite of his effort to control it. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. Discussing Vanyel Demonrider in abstract was one thing. Seriously discussing bringing him here was another!

  He wanted to beg Firesong to tell him that it was not Vanyel Ashkevron he was talking about, but one look in Firesong's face told him differently.

  :I think it would be a very good idea, Karal,: Florian said diffidently. :Vanyel is an Adept. If it is possible, I think it should be done.:

  "I won't ask how this came about," Karal said flatly. "I won't ask how you discovered that Vanyel Demonrider was still... in existence." He closed his eyes and shook his head. "I cannot believe I am hearing this."

  :Boy, if you require more votes on this, you have mine,: said the sword Need. :I've met the man, though I doubt he'll recall it. He and Stefen would be a tremendous asset to the group here. They might even give us that edge we need to beat this thing.:

  Firesong smirked. "The sword is saying that we need an edge. How appropriate. In any case, the Avatars actually suggested it. There are some things in the cube-maze notes that suggest we're going to need—well, more skilled people than the last time. The only way we can think of to get the spirits down here is to send Altra," Firesong said. "We think that Vanyel, his Companion, and his friend can link themselves to something small enough for Altra to transport."