Storm rising

by Mercedes Lackey

  If nothing else, he thought, as the two of them wound their way through the streets of Haven to where the tavern lay, wedged in between a warehouse and a clock maker shop, it will be good to be just myself for one evening, and not His Excellency, the Karsite Envoy. It had gotten dark early, in part due to the heavy overcast, and the chill, damp air, though windless, had gotten colder yet. The darkness seemed very thick, as if it were swallowing up all the light. He was glad both of his heavy coat and the light from the streetlamps.

  They turned a corner and were finally on the cobblestone street in the merchant district. The Compass Rose stood in the middle of the block. As usual, the Rose identified itself by the hum of conversation long before they reached the doorstep. Rumor had it that the clock maker who shared a wall with the tavern was deaf; Karal certainly hoped so, or the poor man would never get any sleep at night.

  From the sound, the Rose was full, which was the usual case on sausage roll night. The tavern boasted both a carved door and a carved sign bearing the compass rose of its name, both illuminated by torches. Karal hung back, feeling suddenly shy, as An'desha reached for the brass handle and opened the carved wooden door.

  Cacophony assaulted them the moment the door swung wide, and Karal felt a twinge of nostalgia. it was as if nothing had changed—the room was exactly as it had been the first time Natoli had brought him here.

  Table after table was full of students—eating and talking at the same time, gesturing with rolls or a piece of cheese, making mechanical arrangements out of the cups and plates, much to the disgust of those who were trying to use those cups and plates. The tables themselves were covered with rough brown paper, because the students tended to draw on them to illustrate some point or other, whether or not the surface was suitable for drawing. There were one or two of the Masters out here, usually with a tableful of their own students, prodding them through an assignment. The rest of the Masters were in the back room, a room reserved for them alone. A student "graduated" when he (or she) was invited to take his meal back in that hallowed sanctuary; there was no other special ceremony marking the ending of his life as a student and the beginning of his life as a professional. Here there were Masters, but no apprentices nor journeymen.

  The roar continued for a moment as the door closed behind them with a thud, and Karal let his ears get used to the noise and his eyes to the light. The Rose was one of the few taverns where the light was as important as the drink, since so many here were working on projects as they ate. In fact, the lighting in the Throne Room at the Palace was dim by comparison. After coming in from the thick darkness outside, the glare of light took some getting used to.

  But as they stood there, and Karal tried to see if Natoli and her cronies were at their usual table, the uproar began to subside, as people saw who was standing in the doorway, and turned to poke neighbors who hadn't yet noticed. As Karal shifted his weight uneasily, the roar faded into absolute silence.

  No one moved. Then, off to the right, a single person stood up, a person who had been sitting with her back to the door. She turned and peered across the sea of faces to the doorway.

  It was Natoli. And for a moment, Karal considered bolting back outside. She's upset with me, and everyone knows it... I've hurt her feelings, and now they all hate me. Oh, glory, what am I going to do?

  "Karal?" she said clearly, and her strong, handsome face lit up with a welcoming smile. Natoli was not "pretty"—but her face had such character written in every line that you never noticed. "Havens, they finally let you take a night off! It's about time! Get over here! Look, everybody, it's Karal!"

  The place erupted again, this time with cheers of welcome, a few playful catcalls, and offers of beer, food, or both. As Karal and An'desha waded through the crowd on their way to Natoli's table, he was staggered often by the hearty back slaps and playful punches his friends aimed at him. It occurred to him then that sometimes being Natoli's friend could be as hazardous as being her enemy!

  He didn't manage to get across the room without being loaded down with food and an overfilled mug that slopped every time someone slapped his back. He kept apologizing, but it didn't seem that anyone noticed. Or perhaps they were just used to stray beer going everywhere.

  Natoli's table was crowded, as usual, but also as usual there was always room for one or two more. People edged over and places were made for him and An'desha, one on either side of Natoli. As he sat down, Natoli helped herself to one of the many sausage rolls that had been thrust at him and offered him a plate of cheese in return.

  He shared his bounty with anyone who didn't have food in front of him, and in the course of getting everyone settled again, he lost all of the apprehension he'd felt.

  "You looked like a Bardic student in front of a hostile audience when you came in," she said, quite matter-of-factly. "Problems?"

  "I suppose I was afraid that you would all be upset with me for not coming here before this," he said, a little shyly. "You might think I thought I was too good for you, now that I'm the Ambassador. Or—something."

  She raised a hand and mimed a cuff at his ear. "Be sensible. Father's a Herald, remember? Just because I don't stick my nose into Court, that doesn't mean I don't know what's going on. They've had you tied up with more meetings and business than any one person has a right to be burdened with, and we all knew it. I made sure everyone knew that."

  He relaxed at that. "I didn't want you to think that I'd forgotten who my friends are."

  "Ha." She applied herself to her meal with a grin. "You've been working, and we haven't exactly been idle. Even if everyone else in Valdemar thinks that the crisis was solved, we know we only put it off for a while. We're still trying to work out a solution. Master Levy thinks there won't be a solution; he thinks we're going to have to come up with one make-do after another, because he thinks that the problem is getting too complicated to actually solve in the time we have."

  "Do the mages know that?" he asked, feeling a chill. More temporary solutions? Doesn't that leave us open to mistakes and the results of mistakes?

  "The mages know," An'desha confirmed. "At the moment they're trying to let their minds lie fallow while they track the current patterns of mage-energy for Master Levy's crew to analyze. I think some of them are hoping that if they don't try to think about a solution, one will spring forth from the back of their heads, fully formed."

  Natoli snorted but didn't comment otherwise.

  "Well, that's not necessarily bad thinking," one of the others pointed out. "I'm not talking about wishful thinking—it's just that if you try too hard to put all the facts together, sometimes they won't fall into place. Come on, Natoli, you know that even happens to us!"

  "I suppose you're right," Natoli admitted grudgingly. "There is Cletius and the bathtub, for instance. It's just that some of these mages are just so certain that they can vibrate their way to answers that it makes me want to drown them all."

  "Let's talk about something else," Karal urged. "Something that has nothing to do with mages or mage-storms or the Empire. What's exciting?"

  A red head at the end of the table popped up. "Steam!" he exclaimed. "That's what's exciting! There's no end to what we can do with it! Who needs magic? Steam will save the world!"

  "Don't go too far overboard," Natoli warned. "There're problems with steam power that we really ought to consider before we have people riding all over in steam-driven carriages. You have to burn things to heat water, and that makes smoke, and what happens when we start putting more smoke in the air? There's already a soot problem in Haven from all the heating and cooking fires."

  "But you won't need heating and cooking fires if we heat everyone's house with the hot waste water from the steam driven mills and manufactories," the other argued. "In fact, we should eliminate most of the soot problem that way."

  "Not if you replace every one of those cook fires with one heating the boiler in a steam carriage," someone else put in. "Natoli's right about that. We really need to think
about what we're doing before we launch into something we can't stop."

  "Wait a moment," Karal interrupted. "Steam carriages?"

  "One of the Masters came up with a water pump for draining mines that was steam driven, and someone else realized that the same principle could be used as the motive power for a carriage, by basically adding wheels to the whole affair rather than having a stationary boiler," Natoli explained. She snatched a stick of charcoal out of someone else's hand and began to draw on the paper covering the table in front of them. "You see—here's the boiler, in front of the firebox; pressure builds up in here and you vent it into the cylinder—the piston gets driven back—that turns a wheel—"

  As she sketched, Karal began to see what she was talking about. "But why steam carriages at all?" he asked. "Aren't horses good enough?"

  Natoli's eyes sparkled, and he realized he had uncovered her secret passion. "But these go faster than horses, Karal," she said. "They never get tired, they can pull more than horses can without hurting themselves, and the only time they have to stop is when they run out of fuel or water."

  "Huh." He could think of places where that would be useful. In the mountains, where the roads were cruelly hard on cart horses Or any time you needed to send something very quickly somewhere. Supplies, perhaps, or soldiers. Of course these things would be limited to places where the roads were good, which was quite a limitation, when you thought about it. Using them on a regular basis meant that the roads would have to be improved and kept in repair, and that could get rather expensive....

  "We're thinking about putting them on rails or in grooved tracks," Natoli continued, waving a sausage roll in one hand as she spoke. "Like the coke carts at the big iron-smelting works. The only problem is that takes a lot of metal, so where do we get all that metal? And if you used cut stone, it would wear out rapidly from the wheels. Every time you solve a problem you bring up twenty more." But she didn't look particularly discouraged. "The point is, we know we can use large versions of this in places where windmills don't work and there isn't any water for water mills. We can use the waste heat to heat houses, or even the Palace. Wouldn't that be a sight!"

  "Wouldn't it be a sight as you get in everyone's way digging up the Palace and grounds to lay all your pipe," An'desha pointed out sardonically. He pushed a fall of his long hair back from his forehead, showing his pale eyes crinkled in smile lines. "I can't see the Queen holding still for that! Especially not in the foreseeable future."

  "Oh, I didn't mean right now," Natoli said airily, waving her hands in the air. "I just meant eventually. After all, it's not as if it hasn't been done. Think of the mess it made when all the new indoor privies and the hot and cold water supplies were put in. That was in the first couple of years of Selenay's reign, and I don't hear anyone complaining about it now!"

  "A point," An'desha acknowledged. "I'd like to see you folk find some other source of heat than a fire, however. Fires are not very clean."

  "Some magical source, maybe?" Karal said without thinking, and blushed when every eye on the table turned toward him. "I don't really know what I'm talking about, I'm just speculating—" he stammered. "Don't pay any attention to me, I'm just babbling."

  "But your babbling makes some sense," Natoli responded, her eyes lighting up with enthusiasm. "A practical application of magic! That might be the answer to my chief objection as well."

  The talk turned to possible magical sources of heat then, and An'desha held center stage as he speculated on how this might be accomplished in such a way that the mage would not actually have to be there to make the source work. It led into talk of binding magical creatures, small ones that thrived on fuel of one kind or another, and it was clear to Karal that An'desha was in his element. Karal was able to watch Natoli to his heart's content, as her face grew animated during the heat of the discussion, and she tossed her hair with impatience or excitement.

  "So," An'desha said, as the door of the Compass Rose closed behind them, shutting off part of the noise, which had not in the least abated. "Feeling rested and relaxed?"

  Karal paused and took stock of himself and blinked in surprise. "Why—yes!"

  An'desha laughed. "Good. That was what I hoped would happen. Now are you wondering why I pulled you away after Natoli left?" He started off down the street in a fast walk, and Karal followed.

  "A little," he admitted, sniffing in the cold and damp, "Though I must admit once she left I got a bit bored when they all started talking about mathematics and drawing on the tables again."

  "Because you and I are going to go to the ekele. Firesong is up to his eyebrows in some discussion involving the Tayledras, the Shin'a'in, and k'Leshya at Haven, so he won't be there. I'm not taking part because I've been told I'm not Shin'a'in enough to satisfy the envoy. He doesn't like halfbreeds."

  "Hmph, I'm not surprised. He seems to dislike all sorts of people," Karal growled. "Well, I don't like him, so we're all even."

  Karal walked on in silence, seeming lost in thought, then turned to An'desha. "What did you have in mind when we get there?

  "You are going to soak in the hot spring, and you are going to have a nice, relaxing cup of Shin'a'in tea, and then you are going to go to your suite and sleep." It was too dark to read An'desha's face, but his voice told Karal he was not going to be argued with. "As I recall, you made the same prescription for me a time or two. and turnabout is fair play."

  "So is that why you have turned into my counselor?" Karal asked, and he wasn't entirely being facetious. The events of this afternoon and evening had proved to him that An'desha had achieved an inner peace that he found enviable.

  If only I could be so sure of things again!

  "The turnabout? Oh, it is a part of it," An'desha said, with serene warmth in his voice. "You have done good things for me, with good reason and without. You have been kind when you could have been neutral. There is a saying from the Plains: Every gift carries the hope for an exchange."

  Karal mulled that over, but his thoughts about the Shin'a'in proverb were eclipsed by marveling over An'desha's calm.

  That was part of the problem he had with the entire situation. He was not only acting as envoy, but as a priest—and a priest should be utterly sure of himself and his beliefs. Either a priest or an envoy should be sure and calm.

  But he was being required to determine what was heresy for those of his faith here in Valdemar, and that was where his beliefs were collapsing around his ears. How could he make a judgment on what was heretical, when he had seen evidence with his own eyes that what he "knew" was the Truth was only truth in a relative sense?

  Take the very existence of An'desha's Star-Eyed Goddess, for instance. For a Sun-priest, there was one God, and one only, and that was Vkandis—yet he had ample proof that was beyond refutation that the Star-Eyed existed and ruled Her people right alongside Vkandis Sunlord.

  To even think that was rankest heresy by the standards of the Faith as he was taught it. But he had been taught the old ways and things had changed drastically since.

  He'd already deferred the decision once, which had only made both parties angry at him. He suspected that this was the reason why he was being confronted by all the heads of religion in Valdemar. They weren't going to accept a deferred decision again.

  Perhaps in his new-found confidence and serenity An'desha could act as his adviser as he had once acted as An'desha's.

  "Would you mind listening to a problem of mine?" he asked, as they walked side-by-side up the deserted street, toward the Palace.

  "You listened to mine often enough," An'desha replied. "It only seems fair. I won't promise an answer, but maybe I can help anyway."

  He explained the predicament he was in; his own uncertainty, and his unwillingness to label anything heresy. "I don't know now if there is a wrong or right, in anything. And I am put in the position of being the person that is supposed to know! It all seems so relative now," he ended plaintively.

  But An'desha only chuckled. "If I
were to turn and stick a knife in you now, that wouldn't be 'relatively' good or bad, would it?"

  He had to laugh. "Hardly!"

  "Work from that, then," An'desha suggested. "You've been reading all those old books that Master Ulrich brought with him, the ones written back before the Sunlord's priesthood went wrong. You have a fair idea what was considered heretical then, don't you? And what's more, since you have those books, and since Solaris approves of them, you can cite sources to prove the position you're taking, right?"

  Fog rose from the damp cobblestones all around them, but it seemed that the fog in his own mind was lifting. "Well, yes, literally chapter and verse. That's true," he said slowly. "I think the problem is that I know what I wanted to say, but I couldn't think of a way to make it stick."

  "You probably still won't be able to make it stick," An'desha warned. "The people you're dealing with are like that new Shin'a'in envoy that replaced Querna; hidebound and dead certain they're right."

  "True, but if they don't like my decision, I can tell them to appeal to Solaris, and as long as I follow what Master Ulrich was trying to show me, I think she'll back me." His cheer was mounting by the moment. "I don't much care if they don't like me afterward. There are so many people in Valdemar now who don't like me that a few more won't matter."

  "That's the spirit!" An'desha applauded. "Good for you. Now are you ready for that soak?"

  "I'm soaked in trouble anyway, why not add hot water?"

  "Careful with that kind of talk," An'desha grinned. "You'll make it start raining again."

  * * *

  Karal's backside and face were both numb. His shoulders ached; he maintained an expression of calm interest, but inside, he was yawning. All we do is talk! he thought, taking a covert glance around the Grand Council table, and seeing nothing but the same expressions of stolid self-importance he had seen for days. We never actually do anything, we just talk about it!