:That's Solaris talking, but it's also something else,: Darkwind said, in Mindspeech tightly focused and tense. :I wonder if Tremane realizes it?:
:Vkandis?: Elspeth asked, but even as she said it, she knew that it was the wrong answer.
:Since when does a male use all of someone's names to scold him?: Darkwind asked, a little of the tension ebbing. :No, Solaris is acting as a Mouth for a different power, and I suspect that if you asked Father Janas, he'd be very familiar with it. Probably her annoyance with Tremane and her familiarity with being a Mouth opened her up to acting as an inadvertent channel for it.:
Elspeth sent silent agreement, after casting a quick glance at the priest, who was watching the little scene with a faint smile on his lips. Darkwind was right. Only a woman—a mother—would scold someone using every one of his names. And wasn't the earth often referred to as Mother? Looked at in that light, there were some subtle physical changes in Solaris that gave more clues. For one thing, she looked more—feminine—than Elspeth had ever seen her.
The scolding did what it was supposed to do, which was annoy him enough to make him willing to admit to a weakness; and in a way Elspeth could feel very sorry for poor Tremane, who hadn't asked for any of this, and had borne up very well under it all. He stiffened his back, looked up into Solaris' eyes, and said, with quiet dignity, "You are right, Solaris. I am terrified. I am accustomed to using power, not having it use me, and the prospect of giving up control over myself to anything gives me the horrors. Doing it with the lives of thousands of innocents in the balance is terrible beyond my ability to articulate."
Whatever had Solaris let her go, and the anger faded as she sat down. "It isn't so bad, being used by this kind of power," she said softly. "You will be exhausted when it is over; perhaps a little ill, though I don't think it will be very bad. I think the power will use you gently, if you don't resist it. Sometimes giving up control in a greater cause is the noblest thing one can do in one's life." She hesitated a moment longer, then it looked as if some wall inside her gave way. Her expression changed completely. "Perhaps you are rightfully afraid that some of us, who have grievances with you, may not protect you with a whole heart. You would have been correct in fearing that not very long ago; I might not have moved to help you if I saw that you were in danger." She took a deep breath and plunged on. "That is no longer true; I forgive you, Tremane of Hardorn, and if it is any more comfort to you, young Karal, who has greater cause to hate you than I, forgave you before I did. The man who loosed the assassin that murdered our friend was an Imperial Commander, subject to the orders and whims of an Emperor with no morals and no scruples, and you are no longer that man." Now she looked shamefaced for a moment. "The Sunlord himself told me that I must forgive you if we were to succeed, but until this moment, I could not."
Tremane looked at her with astonishment, and offered her his hand; she took it in a firm handclasp that said far more than words could have. "Thank you for that; I know what it cost you," was all he said.
Then he released her hand and looked at the others. "Well? Shall we begin?"
As far as Elspeth was concerned, there was very little for her to see or do, other than to feed mage-power to Darkwind, who in his turn did things with it that she could neither see nor follow, although she knew in theory what he was doing. She was what they all called the "anchor" and she brought in the power, directed, and refined it. Tremane searched for the node, and "held" them all there when he found one. Darkwind built the node into a matrix that would permit a single spell to be linked into it. Father Janas constructed the controlling spell that triggered the main spell, using the loss of a shield as the guide for activation. Solaris built the main spell, which created the nine nested shields using power from the node, and Darkwind linked it in. Then, once that node "disappeared" because it was now shielded, Tremane moved their viewpoint on to the next node. In the end, by the time they were done, Tremane was so completely exhausted that he could not even move, but as Solaris had promised, he was neither ill nor in pain. They had worked through him to reach every node in Hardorn and replicate the same shields and spells they had tried on the first node. This was the only way they could have reached all of the nodes without going to them physically; in a sense, since Tremane was bound to all of Hardorn in a very physical fashion because of the blood and soil he had ingested, they actually were working there physically.
They completed their work just as the next Storm came through, and had the satisfaction of seeing their work hold. And Tremane got a small reward out of it after all; since the nodes were no longer being battered by the energies of the Storm, he was suffering only about half of the physical effects he had been enduring with every Storm-wave. This made him feel half again better.
"That in and of itself made this all worth while," he said weakly, but with a smile, and then they sent him off to bed.
"He feels as though he will sleep for a week, but it won't be more than a day or so," Father Janas said with weary satisfaction. "He'll be back on his feet and hard at work shortly. Now do you need anything to alert the peoples in your homes?"
"I will send two of my fastest flyers—mages both—back with the exact instructions in the morning," Tashiketh rumbled, his eyes alight with pleasure at their success. "And if you will permit me, Most Holy, more will convey you and Hansa back to your own land to save you as much time as possible; as many of your escort as care to remain here can, I suppose, and the rest can follow you at their own pace."
Solaris gave him a puzzled look. "I would appreciate it no end, but how do you intend to do this?" she asked. "I assume you mean me to fly with them, but I can't imagine how that could work properly."
"A basket, suspended between them. It is perfectly safe," Tashiketh assured her. "There are some minor spells on the basket to make it and the contents light; you can renew these easily enough, and the only thing you will need to take care with is that you go to ground during Storms."
"Our gryphons use the same means," Darkwind seconded. "It's safer than you'd think. You'll be able to cross into Karse within a few days, even with having to land twice or three times a day as a Storm passes."
"Then I thank you, for I will have to seal off the Temple as well as our nodes, and whether or not Tremane will believe that, it will be a harder task than this." Her words were still a little sardonic, but she smiled, and Elspeth sensed that Solaris would no longer be able to say in truth that she hated Tremane of Hardorn.
"And you?" Father Janas asked Elspeth and Darkwind. Darkwind answered for both of them.
"It is already accomplished," Darkwind said, his voice heavy with tired content. "Gwena has sent the word to Rolan; Rolan has sent it on to Skif's Cymry, who will detail it to the Kaled'a'in of k'Leshya Vale. They will see to it that Tayledras and Shin'a'in alike have the information, and our nodes and Heartstones will be protected within days. Messages will go from Valdemar to every White Winds mage in every land, and from there—wherever the word needs to go."
"Your Companions are useful friends," Father Janas said with envy. "Perhaps there will be room for them in Hardorn in the future." He looked shyly at Solaris. "And there should be room for Temples to the Sunlord as well, I should think. When it all comes down to it, what is done for the cause of Good is done in the name of every Power of the Light."
She smiled; the first open, unshadowed smile that Elspeth had seen on her face since she arrived here. "And on that very optimistic note, I shall thank you and beg leave to go to bed myself," she said, getting to her feet. "Hansa and I have a long journey in the morning."
"Room for everyone," Darkwind echoed, as he and Elspeth walked slowly to their own quarters. "That is not so bad a way to conduct one's land."
"I know," she replied saucily. "We've been doing it that way in Valdemar for some time now."
And now, at least, we have some assurance we will continue to be able to, she thought. And now we can spare some prayers and energy for Karal and the rest where they are.
May all our gods help them, for we cannot.
Emperor Charliss sat in, not on, the wooden Throne in his private quarters, and plotted revenge, for revenge was all he had left to hold him to life. His mind was clear, despite the hellish mix of drugs his apothecary had concocted on his orders, to dull his pain and sustain his failing body. That was because the mix included drugs to keep his mind from becoming clouded. Outside his quarters, a physical blizzard raged, as it had raged for the past three weeks. The mage-storms, too, passed through Crag Castle several times every day, leaving most mages shuddering with the aftereffects. He wasn't suffering from that difficulty, though; or if he was, it was insignificant in the light of the degeneration of his body.
Although he did not appear to take any notice of what was going on outside this suite, such was not the case. He knew very well what Melles was up to; discrediting the Emperor even with the Imperial Army, spreading truths, half-truths, and lies to make it appear that only Baron Melles had the welfare of the Empire in his heart. He was also quite well aware that Melles was doing a fine job of holding the Empire together, even if it was with devious and dubious means. He knew that Melles was using the Emperor's treatment of Tremane as a weapon to bring the feuding political factions of the Empire together under Melles' control. It was a ploy that would not have occurred to Charliss, but in retrospect, given that Melles was detested by at least a quarter of the Great Players in the game of Empire, and feared by another quarter, the only way he could have united them was to find a common enemy they could hate worse than him.
None of that mattered, for he no longer cared what Melles or any other living man did. His priorities were different, and much more personal.
The spells that kept his worn-out body going, that reinforced failing organs, were themselves failing. Each time a Storm came through, he lost more of them and was unable to replace all the spells that were lost.
He saw no way of being able to save himself; he was dying, and he knew it. He could no longer move under his own power anymore; his servants carried him from bed to Throne and back again, all within the confines of his private quarters. The long, slow decline he had anticipated had accelerated out of all recognition.
He was not afraid, but he was angry, with the kind of calculating, all-consuming anger only a man who had lived two centuries could muster. He had been cheated of the last, precious years of his life, and he knew precisely where to lay the blame for it.
Valdemar.
He had sent his scholars on a search for that benighted land and its origin, and had learned things that gave him all the more reason to assume that it was Valdemar that had unleashed these Storms across the face of the land. Valdemar had been founded centuries ago by rebellious subjects of the Empire who had escaped into the wilderness too deeply to follow. But time and distance were no barriers to revenge, as he himself very well knew. The rulers of Valdemar had probably been plotting this attack against the Empire ever since their land was founded. A plot such as this one would have taken centuries to mature, centuries to gather the power for. These Storms could not have been generated by anything less than the most powerful of Adepts working together in concert; such a weapon was fiendishly clever, diabolically complicated.
In the end it might have been his own actions in reaching for the land of Hardorn that triggered the long plots of Valdemar and gave them the opportunity to destroy those who had driven them out of their homes so long ago. He should have read the return of his envoy from Hardorn, dead, with the blade belonging to Princess Elspeth between his shoulders, for the serious warning it really was. You're too close, and we'll finish you; that had been the real message. Like a nest of bees, he had ventured too near, and now the insects would swarm him and destroy him.
It didn't really matter what the cause for their actions was, nor did it matter whether he could have done anything to prevent this. The Storms had been unleashed, he was dying, it was all the fault of Valdemar, and he was going to see to it that Valdemar didn't outlive him—at least, not in any form that the Valdemarans themselves would recognize. Like a wild bear making a final charge, in his death throes he would destroy those who were destroying him.
He had everything he needed; all of the magic of the local nodes, plus all that of his coterie of mages, plus a great deal he had hoarded in carefully-shielded artifacts. Every Emperor created magical artifacts, or caused them to be created; he could drain every one of them. Every mage he had ever worked with, whether he was one of Charliss' private group or not, had a magical "hook" in him, one that tied him back to Charliss. The moment Charliss cared to, he could pull every bit of that mage's personal power and use it as if the mage was one of his personal troupe. The smartest of the mages had, of course, discovered and removed that hook—but most of them hadn't, and Charliss could use them up any time he cared to.
But his own time was rapidly running out. The shields protecting those hoarded objects weren't going to last through too many more Storms, nor were the resources of his mage-troupe, nor of the mages he had hooks in. If he was going to use this power, it would have to be soon.
He sat supported by the tall back and heavy arms of his mock Throne, and contemplated the methods of vengeance. What could he do to finish them, these upstart Valdemarans? What form should his attack take? He wanted it to be appropriate, suitable—and he wanted it to do the most damage possible.
What would the best allocation of his resources be? It's obvious. Release all the power at once, he decided. Release it as the wave-front of the Storm passes, and use it to augment what the Storm does. Make it the worst Storm that the face of this old world has ever seen.
The results of that should be highly entertaining, and since he would release it as the Storm passed from east to west, most of the Empire would be safe.
But Valdemar—ah, Valdemar would have no idea that the blow was coming. The results of such an enormous release of power would be devastating—and amusing, if he lived to watch it, and to collect his information.
Everything from Hardorn to far beyond Valdemar, and from the mountains in the North to the South of Karse, would erupt with Nature driven mad. The weather was already hideous; this would make it unbelievably worse. Earthquake—there would be earthquakes in regions that had never known so much as a trembler, as the stresses in the earth built to beyond the breaking point. Fire—volcanoes would erupt out of nowhere, pouring down rivers of molten rock on unsuspecting cities. Physical storms would spawn lightning that in turn would ignite huge forest fires and grass fires. Blizzards would bury some areas in snow past the rooftops, while floods would wash away the country elsewhere, and mudslides make a ruin of once-fertile hills. Mountains would fling themselves skyward, and the earth would gape as huge fissures opened underfoot. Processes that normally took millennia would occur in a single day or less. There would be no place that was safe, no place to hide. And when the wrath of Nature was over, the Changed creatures would descend on the demoralized and disorganized survivors.
It would be everything he could have wished for. He just wished he was going to live long enough to properly gloat over it; once the energy was released, Charliss would have no more magic to sustain him, and he would die. But so would most of his enemies. Anyone and anything that lived through it all would probably wish for death before too very long.
Tremane would be caught in all of this, of course. which would give him revenge on the faithless traitor—revenge that Melles had been too cowardly or too lazy to take. Lazy, probably; Melles never had been one to pursue targets that were out of his immediate reach; he could always manufacture excuses to obviate any need to do so.
Well, he would take matters into his own hands, then.
It was possible that the extra energy released wouldn't just wipe Valdemar off the world—it might rip through the Empire and its allies as well. The chaos he was about to unleash could have far-reaching effects.
He didn't care. He was long since over caring about things that meant no immedia
te improvement in his well-being.
Why should my Empire outlive me? he asked himself, seething with resentment over the fact that the Empire as a whole was not willing to make the sacrifices to sustain him. I gave them my life and my attention—my entire life. Was I appreciated? Beloved for being stern with them? No. Not at all. They took and took. Now they pay for their greed. They should have thought ahead and appeased me.
And there was no reason to make life any easier for Melles either. Let him patch something together from what was left, if, indeed, there was anything left. Let Melles see if he could actually do something with the crumbs and shards. It would serve that effete bastard right.
He smiled slowly, thinking of how Melles would react. The Baron had been progressing so well in imposing order on the chaos left in the wake of the Storms. He must feel so proud of himself, and be so certain that he had everything under control now. It would be delicious to see how he crumbled as everything he had worked so hard for vanished before his eyes.
Revenge; on Valdemar, on Tremane, even on Melles for daring to succeed—that was all Charliss had left, and he would take it. By the time he was finished, the known world would be driven down to the level of cave-dwelling, nomad-hunter survival. If Melles reclaimed anything at all as an Empire, it would be an Empire no bigger than this city.
I will destroy it all. His hands clutched the arms of his chair, and he felt his dry lips cracking as his smile widened. When he set off the final cataclysm, when he ignited nations to form his funeral pyre, he would prove he had been the greatest and most powerful Emperor to ever live.
No one would ever surpass him as he burned the world to light the way to his grave, and the darkness that followed would be a fitting shroud.
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