"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!
The Valdemaran "Grand Council" was new; an institution formed so that Queen Selenay could attend to the problems that were strictly internal to Valdemar in a forum where every envoy, Guild functionary, Master artificer, and their collective secretaries did not feel urged to put in their own bits of advice. She had been getting nothing done, and every busybody in her kingdom had been privy to Valdemar's internal problems. The old Council Chamber had gone back to the use for which it had been built, and one of the larger rooms in the Palace, formerly a secondary Audience Chamber for the reception of large parties, had been turned over to the new function.
Of course, everyone involved had his own ideas on protocol, which meant that the Queen and her advisers had to come up with some seating arrangement that would suit everyone. A new table had been constructed in the form of a hollow square with one side open, like an angular horse shoe. Around it were placed enough seats for everyone who might conceivably want to have a hand in the situation with the Empire, the mage-storms, or both. The table sat squarely in the middle of the otherwise empty room, and on the platform that had once been the dais was a huge strategic map of Valdemar, Hardorn, Karse, Rethwellan, the Tayledras lands to the west, the Dhorisha Plains, and south as far as Ceejay. The gryphons, when they attended, act
ually sat (or rather, lounged) in the hollow interior of the table, with the rest spaced evenly along the outside. No one sat at the "head" of the table, for there was no head or foot, and so everyone could feel he was equal, superior, or whatever his pride demanded.
Although the room was well-provided with lights, both along the walls and from a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, it was cold. Two ceramic-tiled stoves, one at either end of the room, had to make shift to heat the whole place. The white marble floor and white-painted walls and ceiling added to the impression of cold. Karal always dressed warmly for these meetings, and kept the pages busy refilling his cup of hot tea which he mostly used to warm his hands. Nor was he the only person to resort to such measures to keep warm; he noted that Firesong actually had the forethought to bring a hand warmer and a heated brick which he put inside a special footstool. He cast envious glances now and again at both, as he wriggled his toes in an attempt to keep them from turning into little blocks of ice.
Prince Daren acted as the Queen's voice on the Grand council, leaving Selenay free to rule her country and not sit in on meeting after endless meeting. Meetings at which, it seemed to Karal, very little was accomplished.
That's not fair, actually, Karal thought, looking around again. No one has ever done anything like this before. We're all having to come to terms with each other, and that takes time. We have to learn to work together before anything can happen.
All this, obviously, meant that the Seneschal, the Lord Marshal, the heads of the three Circles, and any other Valdemaran official that normally sat on the Council often ended up attending double meetings when the Grand Council met. And any other Valdemaran functionary who wanted to look important (or actually felt he might be needed) helped to round out the field. This, of course, meant that every single meeting since the breakwater went up consisted of one person after another pontificating on how he and his special interests had been affected, what would probably happen next, and what he thought should be done about it. Typically, those with the most important and relevant information generally said the least.
There should be a way of cutting this nonsense out. It's taking up time. Maybe a maximum word count, enforced by cudgel?
Karal really would have preferred to be off doing something constructive, even if all he was doing was making copies of energy-flow maps for the artificers. At least that would be accomplishing more than just sitting here trying not to fall asleep, a job that grew more difficult as the time crawled by.
So far today, at least eight people had made long speeches that were only variations on "as far as my people can tell, this breakwater business is working and everything is back to normal," and the one currently droning on was the ninth. He was the particular representative of dairy farmers—and only dairy farmers—and they had already heard from grain growers, shepherds, vegetable farmers, fruit growers, professional hunters, the fisher folk of Lake Evendim, and poultry farmers. Each of them had gone on at length about why his particular group had suffered more than any other from the mage-storms, though what this was supposed to accomplish, Karal didn't know.
Why can't the farming folk find one person to represent them all? And why can't he be someone who'll give us hard information instead of whining?
He cupped his hands a little tighter around his tea and resolved to find out where Firesong had gotten the footstool with the heated brick in it.
They can tell the people who sent them that their complaints and troubles are on record, I suppose, he thought vaguely. As if that makes any difference to this group. I suppose it must make people feel better to know that someone at least knows that they are having hard times. It would have been much more useful for all these farmers and hunters and herders to have compared the damages this year with those of previous bad years—during the time when Ancar's magic in Hardorn was causing ruinous weather all over, for instance. Then all the foreign envoys would know how things stood here in comparison to the way they should be, and could offer advice or even help-in-trade if it looked as if help really was needed. They could all compare notes on the damages across the region, and see if there were any differences. The plans being worked out by Master Levy's artificers and the allied mages were all based on information mainly gathered in Valdemar. They were all assuming that patterns in Valdemar were similar to patterns outside Valdemar. But what if they weren't?
He'd tried suggesting that, but the people he'd suggested it to had said that gathering such information was going to take a great deal of time, and could he justify such an undertaking? He'd tried to point out why it would be useful, but no one seemed to find his arguments convincing.
Finally, the man stopped droning. It took Karal and the others a few moments to realize that he had actually ended his speech, rather than simply pausing for breath as he had so many times before.
Prince Daren nobly refrained from sighing with relief, as he consulted his agenda. Though still as handsome as a statue of a hero, the Prince was showing his age more and more lately; there were almost as many silver hairs among his gold as An'desha sported. The stress of the past several years was beginning to tell on both of Valdemar's monarchs. There were strain lines around his eyes that matched the ones around the Queen's. Like the Queen, since he was also a Herald, he wore a variation on the Herald's Whites.
"Herald Captain Kerowyn, I believe you are next," the Prince-Consort said, and although the gentlemen and ladies now seated about this square table were too well-trained to show relief in their expressions, people did begin sitting up a little straighter, and taking postures that showed renewed interest. Kerowyn at least was not going to stand there and drone about nothing; whatever she reported was going to be short, to the point, and relevant.
Kerowyn, who was the same age as Daren, nevertheless remained ageless. Her hair, which she always wore in a single long braid down her back, was already such a light color that it was impossible to tell which hairs were blonde and which were silver. And any new stress lines she had acquired would be hidden by the weathered and tanned state of her complexion, for Kerowyn was not one to sit behind a desk and "command" from a distance. She had begun her military career as a mercenary scout in the field, and that was where she felt most at home. There was not a single pennyweight of extra flesh on that lean, hard body, and every Herald-trainee knew to his sorrow that she was in better physical shape than any of them. When she wasn't drilling her own troops, she was drilling the Herald-trainees in weapons' work, and heaven help the fool who thought that because she was a woman, she would be an easy opponent. She had been sporadically training Karal, and he knew at firsthand just how tough she was.
She stood up to immediate and respectful silence from everyone at the table, Valdemaran or not.
With one hand on her hip and the other holding a sheaf of papers, she cleared her throat carefully. "Well, I don't need to go into the obvious. What we're calling the breakwater is obviously working. The mages tell me that what's happening is that rather than reflecting the waves of force as they come at us to somewhere else, this business they've set up is breaking them up and absorbing them to some extent. That's good news for us, but Hardorn is still getting the full force of the waves."
Chuckles met that, and she frowned. "As a strategist, I don't think that's particularly good for us, my friends. If the situation in there was bad before—and it was—it's worse now. We may see the Imperial forces in Hardorn getting desperate, and desperate people are inclined to desperate acts. I might remind you that they may be blaming us for all these mage-storms. They've made one attempt to break up our Alliance. They may decide to act more directly."
The pleased looks around the table evaporated. Even handicapped, the Imperial Army was vastly larger than anything the Alliance could put together, and everyone here knew it. The members of the alliance had been fighting the renegade King Ancar of Hardorn, separately and together, for years before the Eastern Empire came onto the scene, and their forces were at the lowest ebb they had ever
been. The attrition rate had been terrible on both sides, for Ancar had been perfectly willing to conscript anything and anyone and throw his conscripted troops into the front lines under magical coercions to fight. He had intended to take Valdemar and Karse, even if he had to do it over a pile of his own dead a furlong high. Ancar was gone now, but....
"Now, one way to make sure they don't come after us is to take the fight to them," Kerowyn continued matter-of-factly. "You know what they say about the best defense being a good offense. My people tell me that the Imperials pulled everything back and they've concentrated in one spot, around a little town called Shonar. Looks as if they are making a permanent garrison there. That makes them a nicely concentrated target. Their morale is bad, and it looks as if they've been cut off from resupply and communication with the Empire They depend on magic; right now, they don't have any. My best guess is that they're doing their damnedest just to get dug in to survive the winter. The questions I have, for all of you, are—do you think we should take advantage of that, and are you prepared to back a decision to go on the offensive when that means taking what troops we have right into Hardorn?"
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