But travel to and within Hardorn was not easy by any standard, even those of one who had journeyed from Valdemar to the Dhorisha Plains and patrolled the weirdling lands being cleansed and protected by a Hawkbrother Vale. In all of her life she had never seen snow this deep. The road they followed into Hardorn had been kept clear for traffic, but only enough to permit a cart pulled by two horses to pass. And even then, the wheels of the cart would scrape the walls of snow now and again. Every ten leagues a wider place had been cut, so that carts going in opposite directions could pass, but otherwise the snow was piled up on either side of the road until it reached shoulder-high on a horse. In places where the snow had drifted deeper than that, it could be taller than a rider's head. And the cold, the wind—In many ways, she was grateful that those tall snowbanks were there, because without that shelter they'd be facing a wind that bit as cruelly as any blade, and carried right down to the bone. Hertasi-designed tunics with fur linings and riding coats of sheepskin with the wool turned inside were the only things that made this journey bearable. She was quite grateful that the mysterious, industrious lizard-folk had been able to outfit the entire company with such coats before they all left.
"Why the sigh?" Darkwind asked, his breath puffing out in frosty clouds with each word. His bondbird Vree clung to the padded horn of his saddle, with no sign of discomfort whatsoever—except that his feathers were puffed out all over his body and his head was pulled down tight against his shoulders, so that he resembled a fat ball of wool with a beak. But then, Vree was a forestgyre, and Darkwind had once told her that they had come from stock adapted to harsher climes than this. Darkwind himself cut an odd figure, and not just because of his Hawkbrother costume or the bondbird on his saddlebow; Darkwind's mount was neither a horse nor a Companion, but a creature as intelligent and as foreign to Valdemaran eyes as a gryphon. It was a dyheli, a white dyheli at that, and the representative of his own race to Valdemar. His name was Brytha, and he had brought Firesong from k'Treva to k'Sheyna, then from k'Sheyna to Valdemar, and now consented to bear Darkwind on this current mission. Why? She didn't know; Darkwind didn't know either, and the dyheli seemed disinclined to explain. They were both grateful to him; although not the equal in endurance and speed of a Companion, the dyheli was better suited to this mission than a horse, more sure-footed and vastly more intelligent. The rest of their party rode tough Shin'a'in-bred horses, especially selected for endurance, shaggy as dogs with blunt, blocky heads.
"I'm sighing because I've decided that the one thing I will never say again is to say 'never again,'" she replied with a crooked smile. "Because as sure as I say it, I'm forced to repeat the act I swore never to repeat."
He chuckled ruefully, without needing any explanation. Neither of them had ever thought they would be riding back into Hardorn again. Their previous visit, although memorable, had not been particularly pleasant, either for them or for the Hardornens. When they had finished, mad King Ancar and his adviser Hulda were dead at their hands, mage-caused storms were lashing the countryside, the capital was in a state of total chaos, and the Imperial Army (taking advantage of the moment) was pouring over the Eastern border. And although very few Hardornens were aware of the fact, Elspeth and Darkwind were directly or indirectly responsible for most of the damage and chaos they left behind them.
Not that the Imperial Army was our fault, but that's just about the only thing we can say we didn't have a hand in.
And after the invasion came the real mage-storms, triggering incredibly vicious weather and unleashing real horrors on the unsuspecting countryside. Those were not the fault of anyone living, but they did make life in Hardorn even more miserable than anyone had ever dreamed possible. So riding into Hardorn didn't seem particularly likely or sane a few moons ago.
But that had been before Duke Tremane offered alliance; before it dawned on everyone in this part of the world that the mage-storms were a greater menace than anything mere humans could unleash on each other. Now things that wouldn't have occurred to anyone as possible scenarios were being hastily put into motion.
"Have you noticed something? The weather might be vile, but the land isn't suffering anymore," Darkwind observed. "It's not exhausted and ill anymore, it's just sleeping, waiting for spring. I don't know about you, but that was one of the reasons why I didn't want to ever come back here again."
Elspeth nodded, and so did her Companion Gwena, the bells on her bridle chiming crisply in the sharp, icy air. :Without Ancar draining the land of its power, things are returning to normal,: Gwena replied. :The land, and presumably the people, are no longer sickening. And much as I hate to say it—the blood and life-energy of all those poor folk killed in the invasion may have sped that recovery.:
"That's a horrible thought," Darkwind observed with a shudder, for Gwena had made certain to include him in her Mindspeaking.
Elspeth shivered; intellectually she knew it was probably true, but it was horrible all the same. "That just sounds entirely too much like something Falconsbane would have come up with," she said reluctantly. "But then again, Falconsbane simply perverted things that were perfectly normal and good. And I suppose it would be even worse to think that all those people died and their life-energy went for nothing, or worse, was used by someone like Falconsbane.
:Mages and those with earth-sense have known for centuries that this is the reason why the countryside blooms after a war,: Gwena observed dispassionately. :It isn't just that things seem better, and it isn't just that the people are ready to greet any positive signs with enthusiasm. It's because the lives lost go back to the land, and when the war is over, the land can use them to heal itself.:
"We can at least be grateful that Grand Duke Tremane is apparently more interested in allowing the land to heal than in using that power for his own means," Darkwind replied, as he turned for a moment to stare off into the east. He said nothing more, and Elspeth thought she knew why.
They had only the word of three youngsters and Tremane's own people that he was to be trusted at all. Just at the moment, apparently was the only word any of them could use with regard to the leader of the Imperial forces. Those few facts that they had about Tremane were not much comfort.
Tremane had been sent by his master, Emperor Charliss, to conquer a weak and chaotic Hardorn for the Empire of the East. This assignment was to prove him worthy (or not) to be the Imperial Heir. The Imperial Army had taken roughly half of Hardorn before it stalled, held in place by Hardornen fighters, in mostly uncoordinated groups ranging in size from tiny bands to small armies, united only in their determination to oust the interloper. Since they were fighting on their own ground, they had the advantage once the front lines stretched out and the Imperial forces were thinned by distance. Nevertheless, if nothing had changed, Tremane would probably have been able to reorganize, regroup, and complete the conquest, possibly even carrying it into Valdemar.
But things did change, and in a way that no one could have foreseen; the change had come from a direction no one would have looked, for it had come out of the distant past.
We never do consider the past, do we? But we should have. Wasn't Falconsbane a revenant of that past? And shouldn't that have warned us to turn our eyes and thoughts in that direction? But then again, how can we truly plan for everything, every possibility? Even if we knew all of the threats at any one moment, the defenses for half of them would negate the preparations for the other half. We are better off being resourceful than omniscient, I think.
Once, before there had ever been a Valdemar, in a time so distant that there were no records and only the vaguest of hints about it in the great library of the Heralds, ancient wars had ended in an event known only as the Cataclysm. And until Elspeth had met with the Tayledras of legend, the Shin'a'in of the Dhorisha Plains, and the last, lost Clan of the true Kaled'a'in—progenitors of both the Hawkbrothers and the Shin'a'in—that was all those in Valdemar had known. Now, though, with the help of histories both arcane and mundane, the full story
had been put together.
Elspeth considered that story as she did every time she had the leisure to do so, intent on extracting the least bit of useful information from it. Despite the huge amounts of power involved, there were still human motives and actions behind what had happened so long ago. Even madmen would act according to their needs, so the more that one considered events of history the more one could deduce what those needs had been—and once one understood the needs and motivations of the people involved, one could expound upon what else might have happened, or realize that an obscure detail was actually something significant in context.
There had been two Adepts back then, perhaps the most powerful that the world had ever known, called Urtho and Ma'ar. Ma'ar, the scion of barbarian nomads, had been infected with the mania for conquest, at first for noble reasons of uniting clans to keep them from annihilating each other. Urtho, the epitome of civilization and scholarship, had resisted him. But despite the best efforts of civilization, Ma'ar, Adept and Blood-Mage, had triumphed—
But only for a moment. In the very hour of Ma'ar's victory a dying Urtho had brought defeat to his very door, with a pair of devices that released the bonds on all magic within their spheres of influence. One he triggered in his own Tower; one was sent to Ma'ar. The devices acted within moments of each other, and the results were both devastating and utterly unpredictable.
When it was over, there were two enormous craters where Urtho's Tower and Ma'ar's palace had stood. The first became the Dhorisha Plains; the second, Lake Evendim. And the interaction of the two series of shock waves created terrible mage-storms that had raged over the land for a decade or more, raising mountains and flattening them, disrupting magic, causing living creatures to change and warp out of all recognition, even transplanting entire sections of countryside from one part of the world to another.
Eventually the Storms faded, to be forgotten in the ensuing centuries, assumed by all to have been gone forever. But the forces released by the Cataclysm were stranger and stronger than anyone guessed, and now the mage-storms had returned, echoing back across time from the other side of the world, growing stronger with every new occurrence.
That was what had changed the situation Tremane had walked into, changed it out of all recognition. The situation in Valdemar had been bad, but not a complete disaster. Valdemar had only newly rediscovered true-magic, and did not depend on its power for anything. The other effects of the mage-storms, the vicious and unpredictable weather, the warping of living creatures, and so forth, could all be dealt with in one way or another. But for Tremane's forces, dependent on magic for everything from communication and supply lines to the means to scout the enemy and cook their food, it was a disaster as they found themselves completely cut off from the Empire, effectively blind and hungry as a fighting force. As for what was going on in the Empire itself, that was anyone's guess. Tremane had initially assumed that the Storms were a new weapon unleashed by the Alliance of Valdemar, Karse, Rethwellan, and the Shin'a'in/Tayledras clans. He had reacted accordingly—and in a direction entirely typical of the Empire, where treachery and assassination were so commonplace that children were given bonded bodyguards as cradle-gifts. He had sent an assassin to break up the Alliance.
That was the single act that Elspeth and any other Valdemaran found so difficult to think past. Valdemar had not attacked Imperial forces. Neither Valdemar nor any of her allies had shown any sign of aggression other than increasing the guard on the borders and covertly helping to supply the Hardornen loyalists. Tremane had no reason—except for the obvious fact that Valdemar was not suffering from the Storms as badly as the Imperials were—to think that this was an attack by Queen Selenay or her allies. Nevertheless, he had treated it as one, and had sent a covert operative armed with magic weapons to kill anyone of any importance at or in Selenay's Court.
The man had succeeded only insofar as murdering the envoy from Karse and the one from the Shin'a'in, and wounding several others. That was bad enough, but was sheerest good fortune that it wasn't worse, and no one made any mistake about that. If the assassin had waited until the predawn hours when people were sleeping in their beds, he would have succeeded in killing everyone from Selenay down to the gryphons.
Herein lay the heart of Elspeth and Darkwind's current problem. Now they were supposed to trust a man who used assassins against those he only suspected of aggressive action.
Elspeth found it difficult to think beyond that fact, even though Tremane had won over to his side the last person likely to ever forgive him—young Karal, the secretary and protégé of the envoy of Karse, Sun-priest and Mage, Master Ulrich. Tremane had even somehow convinced Solaris, Son of the Sun and High Priest and ruler of Karse, of his sincerity and his wish to make amends, though only the gods knew how he'd done that.
Well, he hasn't convinced me, and he hasn't convinced Darkwind, she thought stubbornly. Whatever spell of words or personality he put them under, I hope it's going to be more difficult to work the same "magic" on us. I know mind-magic, and Darkwind is so foreign to Tremane's experience that he might as well be another species altogether. And what's more, I wouldn't be in the least surprised to discover that Kerowyn slipped half a dozen special operatives into our escort. Two sides can play the assassination game, if it comes to that.
She hoped that it wouldn't, but she had enough experience now to make her plans around pessimism rather than hope. She didn't officially know that Kerowyn had planted her own agents, but she knew the Skybolts, and they were, one and all, "irregulars." Their skills were not those of straight-on fighters, although they could act and fight as a disciplined skirmishing unit and had in the past.
On the other hand... Solaris has Hansa, the other Firecat. If she wanted to kill Tremane, there is no way he could stop her. So maybe that fact alone will make him behave himself from now on.
That was certainly something else to consider. The Firecats possessed the ability to "Jump" themselves and anyone in physical contact with them from one location to another, and Elspeth was not entirely certain what their range was. Certainly it was good enough that Altra and Hansa served as messengers between Solaris and Selenay, and between the party in the remains of Urtho's Tower and the mages and Artificers in the Valdemaran capital of Haven. Solaris was perfectly capable of placing an assassin of her own right under Tremane's privy to poke a knife up into him if she so desired, and for that matter, there was no reason why Hansa himself could not kill a man if he chose. Although Firecats had the ability to look like common cats if they wished to, in their true form they were the size of enormous hounds, and their claws and teeth were correspondingly long and sharp.
Elspeth blinked at the images that thought conjured up. My thoughts are certainly taking a grim turn today. Maybe I'm concentrating on spilling blood as an antidote to all this whiteness. Dear gods, it's cold—and we haven't seen another human soul since our guides left us.
They'd been lucky when they'd reached the Valdemaran Border. A couple of Hardornen exiles—vouched for by Kerowyn's agents—had cautiously decided it was safe to return and acted as guides up until this morning in exchange for two pouches of currency and two packs of supplies. Now, though, they would have to go on without guides, because the husband and wife had gone as far as they intended.
Last night the party had reached the village from which the couple had originally fled. Even though it proved to be deserted, abandoned, like the other villages they had passed on this road, the two wanted to stay; even in thick white desolation they had a dream of a time in the future when there would be children running and playing in a verdant town square.
Their journey thus far had been an unnerving one, riding through a landscape devoid of humans. Elspeth could only wonder what had happened. The land might be healing, but where are the people? True, Ancar had decimated the population, but why hadn't they met with anyone on this road? Why were all the villages they passed through completely deserted?
The abandoned villages raised
more questions than were answered, for everything had been taken except the heaviest of furniture, and there was no sign of violence. Was this the result of systematic desertion or systematic looting? Who was cleaning off the snow? Were the Hardornens hiding from an armed and possibly hostile group? Given the fact that this was a nation racked by war, that was possible. But why, when there was a Herald of Valdemar riding conspicuously in the front?
Perhaps because at a distance there's no reason to assume I really am a Herald. It's not that hard to get a white horse and a set of white clothing.
"What are our plans for stopping tonight, or do we have any?" she called back to the leader of the troop. They hadn't provisioned themselves for camping, though they had brought all their own food, assuming that rations might be short given the horrible mage-weather Hardorn had endured. It was a good thing they had, or they'd have had a choice between starving and (literally) eating crow.
"In theory there's a town ahead that used to have a weekly market and five big inns," the leader replied, his voice muffled by the scarf swathing his face. "Whether or not it's still tenanted—" he shrugged. "Someone's been keeping the road clean for traders, and I'm hoping it's them."
So was Elspeth, fervently. She was not looking forward to spending another night in an abandoned, derelict building. There was always one building that could be made to serve, and there was certainly no shortage of firewood, but she had always been glad of the presence of the others around her. She'd found it hard to sleep at night, with her shoulder blades prickling as if unseen eyes watched her. No one had actually seen or heard anything that could be taken as a ghost, but such places felt haunted.
She couldn't begin to imagine how Rusi and Severn could bear to stay back there in what was left of their village. Granted, there was plenty of material to make more than one of the houses sound and weather tight again. And granted, they were well-equipped to do just that. But the aching emptiness of the abandoned village would have sent her screaming for Valdemar within a week.
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