Storm breaking (31 page)

The priest closed his eyes and opened his mouth before Tremane could pull away from the unexpected touch. Elspeth started, literally jumped, as what emerged from Janas's mouth was not a chant, but a single, pure, bell-like tone.

The sound resonated through her, filling her ears and her mind, driving every thought from her head and rooting her to her chair. She couldn't have moved if the room had suddenly caught on fire. She couldn't even be afraid; the tone drove out all emotion, including fear. It had exactly the same effect on Darkwind, who stared at Janas with round, vaguely surprised eyes.

But it did
not
have that effect on Duke Tremane.

Beneath Janas' hands, the Grand Duke stiffened, and his own hands came up to cover the priest's, but not as if he was trying to tear Janas's fingers away from his head. His eyes closed, and his hands were clearly holding Janas's hands in place. His own mouth opened, and a second tone, harmonizing with the first, emerged from
his
throat. The effect of the two tones together was indescribable, and even as Elspeth experienced it, she was unable to analyze it. She was suspended in time and place, and nothing existed for her but the two-note song that resonated with every fiber of her body and soul. In fact, every sense was involved; colors intensified and became richer, and there was a scent of growing things and spring flowers filling the air that could not possibly have been there.

How long that went on, Elspeth could really not have said. It took no time at all, and it took forever. The moment when it stopped was as dramatic as that when it had started, for suddenly Tremane's eyes opened wide, then rolled up into his head; his mouth snapped shut, cutting off the tone. He let go of Janas' hands, and he collapsed over his desk as if his heart had suddenly given out.

Elspeth was still frozen, unable to stir. Janas stopped his singing—if that was what it was—the moment Tremane fell forward. For a moment he stared at the Grand Duke in something like shock, shaking his hands as if he had touched a burning coal.

"Well," he said finally, "he
certainly
has earth-sense."

Before either Elspeth or Darkwind could move, the priest pulled Tremane back up into the support of his chair, and shook him gently until he awoke.

"Is—" Darkwind began, half standing. Janas waved him back.

"Duke Tremane is simply suffering from the confusion of having a very
powerful
new ability thrust upon him," the priest said in a preoccupied voice. "But there is nothing wrong with him, I promise you. In fact, he may well be more
right
than he has ever been before in his life."

Tremane was clearly still dazed, as Janas reached for a letter opener on the Duke's desk, seized one of his hands, and stabbed the tip of his index finger with it. He was so dazed, that he acted as if he hadn't even felt the point of the blade piercing his skin.

Janas held onto the Duke's hand so that Tremane couldn't pull it away, and reached into a pouch on his belt, pulling out a tiny pinch of earth. He inverted Tremane's maltreated finger over the bit of dirt, and squeezed until a single drop of blood fell and mingled with the soil.

"In the name of the powers above our heads and below our feet, I bind you to the soil of Hardorn, Tremane," he intoned, letting go of Tremane's hand and seizing his chin instead. "In the name of the Great Guardians of the people, I bind you to the heart of Hardorn," he continued, and took up the pinch of mingled blood and earth. "In the name of Life and Light, I bind you to the soul of Hardorn, and by this token, you and the land are one."

He held out the bit of blood-soaked earth to the Duke's mouth. Tremane opened his lips to receive it, and fortunately, he swallowed it rather than spitting it out, which would probably have been a very unfortunate gesture and a terrible omen.

Janas stepped back, watching the Duke narrowly, and Tremane blinked owlishly at him for a moment. Then, without any warning, he made an odd little mewling cry and clapped both hands to his head, covering his eyes with his palms.

Now Elspeth started to rise, but the priest waved her back as well. "It's quite all right," he said, with immense satisfaction. "I can't begin to tell you how well this is going. He has the strongest earth-sense that I have ever seen in someone for whom it was latent until now—and just at the moment, he's a bit disoriented."

"Disoriented?" the Duke said from behind his hands. "By the Hundred Little Gods, that is
far
too mild a description!" He sounded breathless, as if he had been running a long and grueling race. "I feel—I feel as if I have been deaf and blind, and suddenly been given sight and hearing and I haven't the
least
notion what the things I am experiencing mean or what to do with them!"

He brought his hands down away from his head, but it was quite clear from the bewildered expression he wore and the dazed look in his eyes that he was undergoing sensations he had never experienced before. "I think I may be ill," he said faintly. "I feel terrible. I'm going to be very, very sick in a moment."

"No, you don't." Janas soothed. "That's not your own body you're feeling, it's Hardorn. The land is sick, not you, sick and weary. Separate yourself from it; remember how you felt when you woke up this morning?
That
is you, and the rest is the land's ills."

"That's easy for you to say, priest," Tremane replied feelingly. "
You
aren't in my head!" He was pale and sweating, and his pupils were so wide that there was scarcely any iris showing.

But Janas had already gone to the door and had called for Tremane's aides. "The Duke is not feeling well," he told them. "He needs to be taken to his bed and allowed to sleep. I think it would be wise to cancel any appointments he has for the rest of the day."

Both aides looked alarmed at the state of their leader, and one put a hand on the hilt of his weapon and cast a doubtful glance at Janas, suspecting, perhaps, that the priest had somehow poisoned the Duke or inflicted a disease on him.

"It's all right," Tremane reassured them. "I think I've just been overworking. It's nothing serious."

As if that had been a coded phrase to tell the aides that nothing the visitors had done had caused his condition, both aides relaxed immediately and went to assist their leader to stand. "You know that the Healers have been warning you about overworking yourself," one of them scolded the Duke in a whisper that the foreigners were probably not supposed to hear. This was an older man, the Duke's age or even a few years senior to him, and the aide clearly considered it his responsibility to take Tremane to task. "Now look what's happened to you! You can't work yourself half to death and not expect to pay for it!"

"I'll be all right, I just need to sleep," the Duke said vaguely, and although he was not paying a great deal of attention to his surroundings or his visitors, he no longer seemed quite so disoriented, at least to Elspeth. it seemed more as if he had focused his attention inward, in a state of partial trance.

His two aides helped him into the other room, and Janas nodded at the door. Taking the hint, Elspeth and Darkwind rose and followed the priest out.

"Don't you need to be with him, to give him some kind of instruction?" Darkwind asked anxiously as they made their way along the cold corridors back to their own quarters.

The old man shook his head; he still had that air of great self-satisfaction. "No, he already has the instruction; that was what I was giving him at the beginning. It's all there for him to use, he just needs to sort things out while he sleeps. Don't worry—we've been doing things this way for centuries, not just with our monarchs, but with priests whose earth-sense is also latent. But I must say, this is probably the
most
successful ritual I have ever done!" He rubbed his hands together with unconcealed glee. "Now we'll have to get word across the country what has happened, plan for a coronation, find something like a crown—oh, there are a hundred arrangements we'll have to make."

He shook his head, interrupting himself, as they reached the door of their quarters. "I hope you won't think me rude, but I am going to
have
to leave immediately. There is just too much I have to do, and not a great deal of time to do it in. We'll be sending important people here soon, as liaisons with our new monarch. In the meantime, I think I can count on both of you to help him through the next day or two."

"I can certainly help
explain
what he is feeling," Elspeth replied, but with a little doubt, opening the door and waving him inside ahead of her. "I suspect it might be like the first time I was—ah—blessed with Mindspeech."

"Exactly, exactly!" Janas said, as he gathered up his old robe and made it into a neat bundle. Then he looked down in confusion at the clothing he was wearing, and for a moment, certainty was replaced with uncertainty. "Ah—I—"

"Consider the new vestments a gift from the Alliance," Darkwind said, divining his question before he could ask it. "And please feel free to approach us if any of your other liaisons might need similar outfitting."

Janas turned, taking his hand and shaking it with gratitude. "Thank you, thank you for all your help!" he said, brimming with so much effervescent pleasure that Elspeth could not help but smile back at him. "'Now, I really must be off, there is absolutely not a moment to waste!"

He hurried to open the door to the hallway; fortunately, one of the sentries at the door intercepted him and offered to find an aide to escort him out. He accepted absently as he pulled his shabby cloak on over his new finery, and the last that Elspeth saw of him, he was explaining to the aide some of the preparations that would need to be made to get ready for Tremane's coronation as the new King of Hardorn.

Elspeth closed the door behind them, and joined Darkwind who was sprawled bonelessly on the couch. She suddenly felt as if
she
had been running an endurance test, and collapsed beside him.

"Well," he said finally. "I confess I am at a loss for words."

"I have a few," she told him, putting her head on his shoulder. "But mostly, I can't begin to tell you how
relieved
I feel."

She turned her head so that she could see his face, and he smiled into her eyes. "You know how the Shin'a'in are always saying to be careful of what you ask for," he chided gently. "'And you did ask for some sort of cheek on Tremane's behavior as a leader."

"I did." She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "I can't say that I'm at all
unhappy
about how this has fallen out. This means the probable end of conflict inside Hardorn. They're going to have a real, competent leader. He is going to be incapable of misusing the land or the people, and I have the oddest feeling that he won't even be able to think about going to war with anyone unless Hardorn is threatened first."

Darkwind kissed her forehead, then rested his head back against the back of the couch, staring up at the ceiling. "At the moment, I feel a great deal of sympathy for him. This may not be a punishment commensurate with what he did to our people, but he is going to be suffering real and sometimes serious discomfort for quite some time if I am any judge of these things."

"'Because of the state of the country you mean?" she asked.

He nodded. "Absolutely. You heard Janas; Hardorn is sick, injured, and only now beginning to recover.
He
gets to experience all that, until the land is healed again. What's more, when the mage-storms start up again, whatever they do to the land, he'll feel as if it's happening to him!"

She chuckled, a little heartlessly. "I wonder what having bits of the countryside plucked out and transplanted elsewhere will feel like?"

"'Nothing
I
would care to share," Darkwind said emphatically.

She contemplated the prospect, and it didn't displease her. And she knew someone else who would find the new situation very much to her liking.

"I wonder how long it will take to get word of this to Solaris?" she mused aloud.

:Not long, trust me,:
Gwena replied.
:And, oh, to be a fly on the wall when it does!:

As the official-unofficial liaisons to Tremane on behalf of the rest of Hardorn, Elspeth and Darkwind found themselves dealing with a dozen requests the next morning that were the direct result of Father Janas' work the previous day. "You know, it is just a good thing that all this is happening in the dead of winter," Elspeth remarked to her mate, as she dealt with yet another request for "Royal Patronage" from a merchant in the town. "If we were in the midst of decent weather, we'd have half the country trying to get here for this coronation Janas wants to arrange."

Darkwind had handed most of the correspondence over to her, for the Hawkbrothers had no equivalent to royalty and the pomp and display that went with such personages. He shook his head. "I feel as lost as a tiny frog in the midst of Lake Evendim. Or a forest-hare in the middle of the Dhorisha Plains," he said ruefully. "Now I know what your people mean when they speak of feeling like a 'country cousin.' I haven't any idea what half these people
want
from Tremane."

"Frankly, neither have they," she replied dryly. "Royalty is rather like a touchstone to those who are accustomed to kings and queens and the like. One judges one's own worth by one's worth to the king, whether or not the king is himself a worthy person. All these people are attempting to gather about Tremane in the hope that some of the glitter will rub off."