"It isss a lamp," Treyvan said superfluously.
Now that they could see clearly, they doused their lanterns and took a look around. This, obviously, was not the Vault itself, but probably a workroom to one side, for there was the dark gap of an open door in the wall. Firesong was the nearest, so he was the first one through it, where he stopped, just inside, blocking the door.
"Well," his dry voice echoed back, "it would be nice if I could see. What was that command?" Before anyone could answer him, he tried several versions of the word Treyvan had used, and finally hit on the right intonation. His form was silhouetted for a moment as the light flared to life, then dimmed to the twin of the first.
"I believe," the Tayledras Adept drawled, "we have found what we were looking for."
He moved out of the way, leaving space for the others to enter behind him.
Karal lagged back; for one thing, he was not sure he wanted to see what they were looking for. For another, he knew very well he wouldn't know what he was looking at!
So he allowed all the others to crowd in ahead of him, and trailed behind. He expected exclamations, but he heard nothing but a few whispers.
When he passed the threshold himself, he understood why.
This was a huge room, but practically empty except for four of the crystal lights suspended from the ceiling, and a single floating barge in the middle. Faint outlines in the ceiling above the barge suggested a door or hatchway there.
Around the periphery of the room were fifteen more doors, all of them closed.
Where were the weapons? Had all of them been taken away?
"The weapons must be behind each of those doors, one to a room," Firesong said authoritatively. "If I were holding dangerous objects, that's what I'd do with them. That way if you had an accident with one, it would be confined to the room it was in and not spread to the others."
"You begin to sound like a career artificer, Firesong," Silverfox replied. "That makes entirely too much sense."
Firesong turned to the nearest door on his right, and continued talking. "What's more, I'll bet the room we were in held a weapon that Urtho did use, and the reason that the barge is in here is to take large or bulky creations up to where you can—or could, I mean—move them out the doors."
"I wonder why this place even exists," An'desha said, as Firesong checked to see if the door was locked before he tried opening it. "You'd think that a force that would melt the Tower would destroy everything, wouldn't you?"
"Maybe because this was right below the event, none of the force went downward," Karal hazarded, trying to remember some of what he'd learned from the artificers.
"Perhaps the shields on the Vault disintegrated, but absorbed all of the force in the process," Silverfox guessed.
"Perhaps the Star-Eyed had something to do with it," Lo'isha said with great dignity.
"Perrrhapsss all of thossse rrreasssonsss, perrrhapsss none," Treyvan said with impatience. "Isss the doorrr locked orrr not?"
"Just stuck," Firesong replied, finally shoving it open. He spoke the word that lit the lamp and gave an exclamation of disappointment.
"Come look for yourself, but I don't think this one is going to do us any good," he said, waving them over.
Once again Karal held back, but on his own viewing, he was inclined to agree with Firesong. This room contained a conglomerate of bizarre parts, from coils of wire to animal skulls with jeweled eyes, all woven together in a crazed spider-web of colored string, ribbon, hair-thin wire, and rawhide thongs.
"Good God, why skulls?" Karal exclaimed, revolted.
"Perhaps because they had been used in shamanic ceremonies and so now were attuned to power of a sort he needed," Lo'isha hazarded. "Not Kaled'a'in ceremonies, but Urtho made use of the magics he had learned from many peoples, and many peoples were his allies."
"I don't know about you, but I don't even want to touch that," Firesong said as he edged back outside. "I don't know what it does, and I'm not sure it would still do it at this point—and even if it did, how much of it would fall into dust if you brushed against it?"
"Trrrue," Treyvan said, taking care to tuck his wings in as he moved back outside. With one accord, they closed the door with the greatest of care and moved on to the next room.
By the time they were finished, they had eliminated eight of the fifteen possibilities. None were quite as bizarre as the cow-skull construction, but no one wanted to take any chances on them. Two were featureless boxes that had even Treyvan shaking his head in bafflement, one was an unidentifiable object that resembled nothing so much as a spill of liquid caught and frozen in midair. Two more were delicate sculptures of wires and gemstones that they were all afraid to touch lest they fall to pieces, and the remaining three Treyvan recognized from his litany as being simple weapons of dreadful mass destruction of life and property—not at all suited to their purposes, for there was nothing magical about the energy released when these things were triggered.
That left seven possibilities.
With each of the objects was a metal plaque, identifying how to destroy it, but nothing else about its nature, except the single line, "You cannot use this weapon without killing yourself. Neither could I. Be wise, and be rid of it." Each plaque was signed with Urtho's name and sigil.
They gathered rubbings of all these plaques, together with a crude drawing of each object and the number of the room it was in—counting the empty room as number one and going sunwise—and sat down together in the floating barge to discuss what they had.
"We have three days to decide which device and how to work it, one day to set up and practice, and that's all," Firesong warned. "If we don't succeed by then, working with the assumption that the waves going out can be made to match the speed of the ones coming in, the breakwater will go down. Irrevocably. Without that to break up the force, the next mage-storm through here might well trigger one or more of these things."
"Sssurely not—" Treyvan said, but he did not sound certain.
"Are you willing to stand around here and wait to see? I'm not, Firesong said bluntly. "Frankly, I didn't think we'd find more than one or two of Urtho's weapons existing; I never dreamed there'd be this many that were still intact. It seems to me that if we don't succeed here, we'd better evacuate the Plains and k'Leshya."
"I wish I didn't feel the same way," the shaman said with reluctance. "I had not expected to find so many lethal objects here either. If one or even two were activated, the Tower and the physical containments still here would probably keep the damage to a small area—but if three or more went—" He shuddered, his face white.
"Right," Firesong nodded. "And we are making a lot of assumptions about whether they'd 'go off,' for that matter. Some of them might be the magical equivalent of a slow acid, some might simply shred things randomly for a long period of time."
"Then let's get on with this and make a decision!" An'desha exclaimed, his nervousness evident in the high pitch of his voice.
But a few hours later, it was clear that they had another problem.
Between the litany and the instructions for disposal, it was possible to deduce what each of the remaining seven objects did, and they were able to eliminate three more of the seven. The trouble was, when they had ranked the remaining four in order of suitability, they came to another, unexpected snag.
The language that the k'Leshya thought was the purest Kaled'a'in, that they had cherished—they fondly assumed—as unchanged for centuries, was anything but pure and unchanged.
"Look, we have three words here that all mean 'explosive'!" Firesong burst out. "Your version of Kaled'a'in has two of them, Treyvan, ko'chekarna and chekarna and from the destruction instructions I think we've got a third, ri'chekarna! So which is right? We have to know or we're likely to get our number one choice going off right in our faces!"
"I—do not know," Treyvan said helplessly. "The language hasss ssshifted.…"
"Languages do, over time," Lo'isha said ironically. "Your
mistake was to assume that since the Kaled'a'in were among peoples that avoided change, your language and ways were immutable. We need a scholar in ancient Kaled'a'in—"
"Or someone with ForeSight, who could look at each of these things and determine which one we can use safely!" Karal said suddenly, as he looked directly at Florian and Altra.
The two looked at each other, as if they were consulting silently. The little group stared at both of them in an expectant hush. It seemed to take forever before Florian turned back to them, but it was Altra who "spoke," although his eyes were directed off past Karal's shoulder, as if he was concentrating on something.
:I cannot bring someone here in time. Florian cannot reach that far with his mind.: Karal's heart fell.
"I can't build a Gate that will reach that far," Firesong reminded them, "And neither can An'desha."
"Then we arrre rrright back to the beginning." Treyvan's ear-tufts flattened against his head. "Back to language, a ssset of verrrssse that hasss ssshifted meaningsss overrr the yearsss, and guesssesss which can get usss all killed."
"No—" An'desha corrected, his eyes half-closed in thought. "We do have more than that. Mage-Sight should tell us something about the power sources, and that should tell us if it's something we ought to avoid."
"It might tell usss otherrr thingsss asss well," Treyvan put in, his ear-tufts rising again.
"And let usss make the bessst transsslationsss we can," Hydona added. "If we have the choicssse between a devicsse with a good trrranssslation and one with a half trrranssslation, need I sssuggessst which we usssse?"
Firesong rubbed eyes so tired and puffy they were mere slits. In the end, there was only one device they could use, and it was not their first or even second choice. Karal had spent the time making himself useful while the mages pondered translations and probed the devices with every tool available to them. Precious time was lost while they did so, but none of them were wasting any time either. They hardly slept, and ate only when Karal or Silverfox put food in their hands.
And in the end, the shaman himself used his powers, ill-suited as they were to such a task, attempting to help with a selection. His "inspired guess" matched the choice of the mages.
"There's only one problem," Firesong said glumly, eyeing the unprepossessing pyramid of silvered metal. "This thing is going to kill whoever activates it. According to Treyvan's litany and what I've gleaned from the destruction information, the rest of us would be able to get far enough away to avoid incineration, but not the person setting it off. It can't be set off magically, we don't have anyone who can move things with his mind with us, and when it goes, not even Altra would be able to jump out in time. Assuming he had two hands with four fingers and a thumb each, which he doesn't."
"Unlessss—" Treyvan prompted.
Firesong shrugged. "I don't see where that could make a difference. The fatal flaw in this thing, and the reason Urtho never used it, is that there's spillover energy in the physical plane. Incandescent, white-hot spillover energy."
Karal looked from one to the other. "Unless what?" he prompted.
Firesong grimaced, and Treyvan answered. "Unless the perrrssson trrrigerrring it isss a Mage-Channel. He might be able to channel the ssspilloverrr enerrrgy to the enerrrgyplanesss wherrre it isss sssupposssed to go."
"Yes, well, there's just one little problem with that," Firesong snapped. "He stands even odds of getting burned out—if he succeeds—and he'll need to be completely shielded, and if he loses control, he'll still get killed along with whoever is shielding him! That assumes we had someone who was tough enough to—"
He stopped, suddenly realizing that Karal had gone white as snow, and An'desha, Florian, and Altra were all staring at him. The muscles in his throat tensed as he swallowed.
"I'm a channel," he said, in a whisper.
Now Firesong stared at him, too, his mind whirling. "You're a fool if you think you can do this," he said harshly. "If you thought the Iftel border was hard, it's nothing compared to channeling this thing! You're not trained, you can't even see mage-energy—
"But I am a channel," the young man persisted, though he was still pale and drawn. "And I've been told that channeling is instinctive, not learned."
"You're going to kill yourself!" Firesong shouted, unable to bear the tension. "You're out of your mind! We can't help you. You'd have to do this alone! The best we could do is shield you!"
"Is there any other choice?" Karal countered, looking each of them in the eyes. One by one, they each shook their heads. Finally, he came back to Firesong, who clenched his teeth angrily.
"Firesong—we all knew when we came here that we might not come back. We have all resolved in our own ways that we are willing to make sacrifices for even a chance of saving our homelands." Karal's facial expression looked like that of a boy ready to cry, but in the way he held his chin up and back straight, he acted like a grown man facing a moment of truth. "I know that if I have to give my life in this, I will be welcome in the Sunlord's arms."
How dare the whelp put him in this position? How dare he volunteer to get himself turned to a cinder before Firesong had a chance to get his own feelings straight?
"Damn you—" he began, but Karal interrupted him with a wan smile.
"I don't think your curse is capable of overriding Vkandis' blessing, Hawkbrother," he chided gently. "But if there is no other choice, I suggest you take it back anyway. I'm going to need all the help I can get."
"I take it back. But may all your children turn out like you!" Firesong exploded, unable to come up with a better "curse" to vent his feelings. He turned violently away and escaped to the empty chamber to pace. His gut was a solid knot of tensions, his neck felt as stiff as old rawhide.
How can he do this? He's right, but how can he? This is insane! An'desha will never forgive me!
Soft footsteps at the entrance to the chamber warned him that he was not alone.
"I have to, you know," Karal said quietly. "I had the feeling it might come to something like this. Altra kept saying he wanted me along for 'contingency'; I think he must have meant that there was an equal chance you'd have been able to use one of the other devices." A soft sigh. "The ForeSeers all said that the futures were so tangled they couldn't see past us getting here. There was always a chance that something else might have worked out."
"Maybe. If we had more time to study them. If I wasn't reasonably certain the wave front of the next mage-storm was going to get in here as well as everywhere else—this is the origin-point, after all. Hellfires! Where else would the energy go but here! And this place can't keep taking a battering without at least one of these devices going on its own!" He" stopped pacing and turned to look into Karal's white and, strained face. "I do not want you to do this!"
"I know," Karal told him.
"But if you're going to insist—by your gods and mine, I'm not going to stand around outside this place and leave you to do it alone." In this much, at least, he could assuage his own conscience. "I'll shield you—"
"We'll all shield him," An'desha said, coming up behind Karal. Firesong started to protest, then shrugged. It was their choice, too.
All right." He took a deep breath and tried to reckon the time passed. "How much time do we have left? I know it can't be much."
"About half a day." Karal sounded steady enough. Maybe he could do it. "I've been keeping very careful track. Every mark we delay means the closer the wave front will be to Haven and the Heartstone there. Tremane's people can weather one more storm, maybe two—"
"But the shielding on the Stone might go down, not to mention all the other Vale Stones, I know, I know." He suppressed a wave of irritation at Karal for restating the obvious. He let his irritation show as he answered in a growl. "All right, then, if that's the way you all want it, who am I to argue?"
An'desha looked for a moment as if he might retort, but only turned back to the main room. Karal followed him, leaving Firesong to trail behind, feeling as if he had someho
w lost an argument, even though there hadn't really been one.
They spent their remaining time in rehearsal for the moment. Aya chittered at him from atop the pack as Firesong rummaged deep into the side pocket. He noticed that he was not alone in surreptitiously going to his belongings for stimulants to keep him wide awake and alert; such things were dangerous and they would all pay later—if they survived this—but every mage knew there would be times when there were not enough hours to rest before a vital working and carried a packet or two of such things. He even caught the shaman chewing a mouthful of something with an expression of distaste that told him it was not dried meat.
Tayledras stimulants had the peculiar quality of setting everything emotional at a distance, enabling Firesong to focus on the purely intellectual project at hand. The mental exercises that sharpened the mind came to him naturally, like a musician practicing his fingerings quicker and quicker. Diagrams of light shone against his lids as he concentrated, eyes closed—symbols for Vale, Veil, Heartstone, ley-line, shield, absorber, deflector, suspensor, buffer-current and anchor, circle and square, star and sphere—they all appeared and interwove. And it occurred to him, as soon as he felt that distancing of his inner turmoil, that there was a reason for that pattern in the floor of every storage chamber. The compass rose.
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