Storm breaking (49 page)

Finally the Baron and all of his men trooped out, to be accommodated overnight in one of the barracks. In the morning, Tremane would meet with them again and give them warning and instructions concerning what everyone here was now calling the "Final Storm," and what to do to weather it. Then, when everything had been organized for their return, they would go back home with a small caravan of supply sledges. Only after the doors closed behind them, could Tremane fold his body over his knees and his own people rush to help him.

But he waved them away before they could do more than ask him what was wrong.

"I'll be all right," he said, and Darkwind let out the breath he had been holding, for he
sounded
normal, just a bit shaken. "It's nothing physical, and I don't believe it's anything to worry about. Just—something unexpected just happened; let me sit here for a moment or two more while I get over it." He looked over at Darkwind and smiled ruefully. "Quite frankly, it feels as if someone just dropped me off a very high cliff, and I stopped just short of the ground."

Elspeth knelt at his side, and Darkwind joined her. "It's the new Barony, isn't it?" she asked. "It's something there. Is it the Storms starting again?"

As if her questions gave him a focus for his own sensations, he seized on them. "Yes. No. Yes, it's Adair, and no, it's not the Storms. I don't know what it is, but it's not—no wait." His eyes took on that far-off gaze again. "It's the border, the northern border. Adair is on the northern border, and something has happened up there. Something important. Something that changes everything."

"What—" one of Tremane's generals began, but Tremane just shook his head, dumbly.

"I don't know," he repeated. "I just know—it's something completely new."

"What's on the northern border?" someone else asked, and looked at Elspeth for the answer.

She had one for that question, but she had turned as pale as Tremane. "Iftel," she said, and her hand clenched tight on Darkwind's. "Iftel. The one place in this part of the world that
no one
knows anything about."

"So that's the message?" Tremane said, his eyebrows rising. "Just that? Nothing more?"

With his recovery, the meeting among Darkwind, Elspeth, and Tremane that had been interrupted had been moved back to the office in his quarters, but by now they had all forgotten whatever it was they had been talking about, for a message had come by way of signal-towers from the North. Unfortunately, it only confirmed that something had happened, and gave them very little other information.

"That's all there was, sir—Your Majesty—" the aide recovered from his mistake. "Just that the border with Iftel suddenly opened, and a new delegation of something friendly was coming down here to meet with you. I'm afraid," he continued apologetically, "that the signal language is not very specific."

"The signal
did
say they were friendly, though? You're sure you're not misreading that?" if Tremane's voice was sharp with anxiety, Darkwind couldn't blame him.

"No, sir, that much is
quite
clear," the aide said with certainty. "The old man at the signal did say that the term used was one that he hadn't seen very often, but that it was definitely noted as being friendly."

"Thank the gods for small favors," Tremane muttered, and sighed, running a hand over his chin. "Well, now I know what it—ah—
feels
like to have the Iftel Border open up. That's useful information. But how whatever is coming expects to travel in this winter weather, I can't begin to imagine."

"Peregryn and his men did," Darkwind pointed out. "There's no reason to suppose others can't, but it will take time for them to arrive, perhaps weeks on foot, ten days by horse."

"By then, I might even have a throne I can sit on without worrying if it's going to break and drop me on my rump," Tremane sighed, then laughed. "Listen to me complaining about a flimsy throne! As if that was the worst thing we have to face!"

"A delegation from Iftel," Elspeth mused, twisting one of the rings she wore around and around. "They've always allowed a single envoy from Valdemar inside their land, so long as it was a member of the Merchant's Guild—but never anyone from the Mercenary's Guild. And they would never permit Heralds inside." She shook her head. "The envoy never would tell us much, only that they 'preferred peace' but weren't particularly interested in any exchanges with us."

"Very insular," Darkwind commented, quite well aware that this was a case of the goose complaining that the swan had a long neck.
One can hardly call the Tayledras anything but insular.

"They could have good reason for being insular," Tremane pointed out. "When was the first time people of Valdemar encountered them?"

"Quite some time after the Founding," Elspeth admitted. "Their barrier was already in place then, at least according to the Chronicles. It was a merchant who was first allowed inside, and it has mostly been merchants who crossed it since." She smiled deprecatingly. "They may be insular, but like the rest of us, they enjoy buying things." Darkwind hid his own smile. for that last shot had been meant for herself. She had been unable to resist spending some of her own money on a few odd trifles that had turned up in the loot of the Imperial storehouse.

"So they could have encountered someone or something extremely dangerous before they ever saw you," Tremane pointed out, his eyes speculative, as he probably tried to envision what could have been so terrible that it caused an entire country to erect a magical barrier to keep out intruders. That it was a barrier that had survived centuries and baffled the magic powers of Ancar, Falconsbane, and the Empire alike made it all the more intriguing.

"They probably did," Darkwind put in. "In those early days, there were terrible things that far north. There was at least one Tayledras Vale somewhere about there, and
our
Chronicles report that at some time while they lived there, they encountered and defeated a Dark Mage much like Ancar's servant Falconsbane, but with a larger following."

He did not add that this mage probably had actually been Falconsbane in one of his earlier incarnations. Tremane neither knew about Falconsbane, nor likely cared; the only person still concerned with Ma'ar-Falconsbane was An'desha, and only because An'desha still held those critically-important memories. But as for the rest of them...

Falconsbane is dead, with the past, and this time he will stay that way. And about damned time, but we have more important things to worry about.
The sober glance that Elspeth cast his way said virtually the same thing. For now, the situation was grave enough that even isolated Iftel was opening her borders and sending representatives to them; there was no leisure to dwell on the past.

"I don't know what, if anything, these representatives of Iftel might offer you," Darkwind cautioned.

"If nothing else," Tremane mused, "perhaps we can get them to part with the secret that makes up their Border. It's shielded them from the worst of the Storms so far; it might be able to shield us as well."

"Provided these people arrive here before the question becomes academic," Gordun, Tremane's chief mage, reminded him dryly. "It's a long way to the northern border and the going is difficult; by the time they get here, the Final Storm could have left us in ruins here."

Tremane nodded ruefully. "A good point, though it was an entertaining thought while it lasted. Well, that brings up the next decision; what shall we tell our newest Baron tomorrow about the Final Storm?"

"Hide, and finish your card games quickly?" one wag suggested. There was a general, strained laugh, and then the discussion moved into the serious channel of what to do in the immediate future. Eventually, late that night, precisely what should be told to the Baron and his entourage had been worked out; enough to make him understand the gravity of the situation, but not so much that he would panic. Panic would be bad for Peregryn and his people as well.

Over the course of the next couple of days, the Baron got his pick of surplused supplies, was given a review of troopers interested in resettling up north, and got his briefing and warnings about the Final Storm. He and his own advisers were philosophical about that last; there was nothing they could do to stop it, and they could only hope that the physical effects were limited to places with no human populations. During the first of the storms, caught both by the initial storm waves and the reflected waves from the Iftel Border, they had suffered more damage than anyone yet reporting in. "We have already had a half-dozen people unfortunate enough to be caught in one of the things we are calling 'change-circles,' and they were changed even as beasts are," Peregryn said, with a shrug of deeply felt helplessness. "The fortunate died."

"And the unfortunate lived," added one of his advisers grimly. "Though often, that was not long, when they made the mistake of approaching others for help. It wasn't always their bodies that changed, at least not outwardly."

Tremane exchanged a significant look with Darkwind. This was something he and his people had thought of at about the same time the potential for trouble occurred to the Allies. But while those in Valdemar had been concerned with prediction of where the change-circles would occur, and thus preventing people or large animals from being caught in one, the people in and around Shonar had planned on what to do
when
a human became a monster.

Until this moment, that had been nothing more than a possibility. Now they knew that there
were
transformed humans somewhere out there in the north, and it was time to put some of those plans into action in case the hapless victims trekked south. Tremane wrote something on a small slip of paper and passed it to a page to take to his clerks. The orders, already written out, would go into the troops' daily briefing. In essence, they were simple enough;
Humans have been caught in the Storms and changed. If a boggle shows intelligence and no aggression, be wary—but leave it alone long enough for it to show its intentions
.

There had been some debate on the subject, with a minority objecting to the mere idea of giving a boggle the chance to attack first, and a second minority wanting to make attempts to communicate with every boggle that even paused for a moment before attacking. Finally, to end the debating, Tremane had exercised his royal prerogatives and decreed the language of the order, which predictably did not entirely satisfy anyone, not even Tremane himself.

Darkwind had noticed, however, that Tremane had applied enough of the Imperial manner not to care if anyone was satisfied (including himself), so long as his decree did the job for which it was intended.

Neither of them could ever have guessed the immediate effect of that simple order.

Not more than two days after sending Baron Peregryn and his entourage and gift sledges off, during yet another ceremony of seisin—this time for the benefit of a very old Squire who had sent his informal pledge some time earlier, but who had not felt equal to taking the winter journey until now—they learned exactly why the signal-towers had said that some
thing
was coming down from Iftel.

No one there could have expected just what the some
things
were.

Tremane had just added his blood to the soil that old Squire Mariwell had brought with him, when a great clamor arose up on the walls of the manor. Darkwind started and looked up automatically, although he wouldn't be able to see a thing through the stone walls and ceiling. With great presence of mind, Racky took the casket of earth from Tremane's hands, mixed the contents quickly, divided them and handed the old man his own casket back, while all about him, his elders were behaving skittishly, staring and muttering among themselves, hands on empty scabbards. Before Tremane could send to find out what the cause of all the ruckus was, and right after Racky pressed the casket of soil back into its owner's shaking hands, one of the King's bodyguards came bursting into the Great Hall, his face as white as the snow outside.

"Boggles over the castle!" he cried. "Oh, by the gods! Great, huge, flying boggles! So many they cover the sky! Oh, gods, help us..."

Elspeth held up her hand to shade her eyes, and squinted up at the dark shapes hovering in the brilliant blue sky above the courtyard. It was too soon yet to say just what these "boggles" looked like, other than the fact that they were winged, but there was something about those black V shapes and the way that they swooped and soared that looked tantalizingly familiar.

They remind me of Treyvan and Hydona, but they don't fly exactly the same way. Could they be gryphons? There've been rumors of gryphons in the north for years now...

"Remember your orders, men," Tremane called to the nervous sentries on the walls and towers above. "No shooting without provocation."

Pray they don't take simple swooping as provocation!

"There're exactly twenty-one of them," Darkwind said absently from her right, as he peered upward into a sky blindingly bright. He bit his lip and she sensed that he was thinking hard for a moment, then his eyes narrowed as if he had just made a decision. He extended his gloved hand to Vree, who transferred his perch from the shoulder to the gauntlet with that intensity of gaze that told Elspeth he was getting silent instructions from his bondmate.

A heartbeat later, Darkwind flung Vree upward, and the bondbird pumped his wings skyward, heading straight for those twenty-one mysterious Vs. "I'll know in a moment just—" He began, his eyes half closed.