Storm breaking (58 page)

Karal just sighed and sat beside Altra with his chin on his hand. "The worst part of it is that a mind-talking horse is the most normal of all the folk around here!"

Florian only whickered, and mind-laughed weakly.

* * *

Fortunately for Karal's peace of mind and Florian's sense of profound inferiority, the three newcomers mostly remained "unmanifest" to save energy, and simply tendered advice to Firesong by means of Mindspeech. Karal had the feeling that Vanyel was a little hurt that the Karsite was so nervous in Vanyel's presence, but there was no help for it. Karal himself wasn't entirely sure why Vanyel made him so edgy. It might simply have been that the Herald-Mage was everything that Karal was not, but without the somewhat inflated self-esteem of his descendant Firesong. It might have been unconscious residue from all the "Demon Vanyel" stories he'd been told as a child. And it might only have been that Vanyel was so obviously everything that a Karsite feared about the night, and although Karal had been working with stranger beings, Vanyel's presence was simply the one bit of strangeness that was too much.

He had his own problems that were similar to Florian's—the fact that of all of them,
he
was really the most ordinary, and aside from his ability as a Channel, apparently the least necessary. He was not brilliant like Master Levy nor a mage like Sejanes or Firesong; he could not translate the ancient texts as Tarrn and Lyam could, nor had he the knack of amusing everyone and helping them see solutions to their problems as Silverfox did.

It was Silverfox, however, who made him realize that the things about him that were the most commonplace were the ones that made him the most valuable in this group of those who were out of the ordinary.

"I'm glad we have you here, Karal," Silverfox said to him the next day, as he shared stew that Altra had not been awake to eat with the
kestra'chern
.

"Me?" he said with surprise. "Why?"

"Because your strength is that you are forced to handle wildly extraordinary events and people—and you just
do
it, without complaint. You set the rest of us an example. After all, if you can handle all this,
we
should certainly be able to."

Karal made a face. "I think I'm being damned with faint praise," he replied ironically.

"It isn't meant to be faint praise," Silverfox said earnestly. "What I mean is that you are finding great strength and grace inside yourself, and you prove to the rest of us that we should be able to do the same." He gazed into Karal's eyes with intense concentration. "You keep us centered, reminding us that there is a world out there beyond these walls. You give us perspective in this rather rarefied company, and help keep us all sane." His smile was just as charming as anything Firesong could conjure. "In your own way, my dear young friend, you are a constant reminder of everything normal and good about the world that we are trying to protect."

Karal blushed; that was all he could do, in the face of words like that.

:He's right, you know,:
Altra seconded.
:It isn't the great mystics and saints who do the real day-to-day work of keeping people's faith firm, it's the ordinary priest—the good man who goes on being good, no matter what he has to face. Ordinary people know in their hearts that they could never withstand the trials that a saint undergoes, but if they see a person who is just like they are, and watch him bearing up under those trials, they know that they can do it, too. And as for the great ones, when they see an ordinary man bearing extraordinary burdens, they are inspired to take on far more than they might otherwise do.:

Now he was blushing so hotly his skin felt sunburned.

"Meanwhile, we
are
having to face a crisis," Silverfox continued, his smile fading as he sobered. "And it is coming on us swiftly. Firesong wanted me to tell you that they're going to use the cube-maze, after all."

That cooled his blushes in a hurry, and he nodded. Silverfox reached for his chin and tilted it up, looking deeply into his eyes, then nodded as if satisfied by what he saw there. "You know that this is the best choice of all of them," he stated. "Firesong says that of all the weapons, this offers the most gain." He said nothing about risk, but he didn't have to, for Karal already knew that the risk of using any of those weapons was great, and they really could not know how great until they triggered one.

Karal nodded. "And I knew that it was quite likely I would have to work as a Channel again. It's all right; I'm not afraid this time."

Strangely enough, he wasn't. "He wanted
me
to tell you, so that you would know he doesn't intend you to have to bear any more than any of the rest of them." Silverfox's ironic expression filled in the rest—things best left unsaid. Karal knew, though, that Firesong would not be able to lie successfully to the
kestra'chern
, and Silverfox would not allow him to put Karal in for more than an equal share of peril. In a sense, Silverfox was vouching for the Adept.

Karal shrugged awkwardly. "The cube-maze was their first choice the last time, they just couldn't come up with enough information to make it work. I'd rather be channeling for something that is their first choice, rather than their third or fourth."

He didn't pretend to understand half of what the mages were talking about, but the device they called a "cube-maze," which resembled a pile of hollow cast-metal cubes stacked rather randomly atop one another, was supposed to have had a nonliving core to do the channeling. Either Urtho could never get the thing to work correctly in the first place, or else the core was no longer functioning. In either case, there was no one here that was capable of making a device to act as the channel. That meant Karal was the only hope of making this thing work. It
might
work better with a living channel; that might have been one of the reasons it had failed in the first place. A living channel could make decisions; a nonliving channel couldn't.

Like the other devices here, the cube-maze didn't look anything like a weapon. It was rather pretty, in fact; there was an odd sheen or patina to the blue metal surface that refracted rainbows, like oil on water. One of the truly strange things about all of these weapons was that none of them looked alike. It was difficult to imagine how the same mind could have come up with so many dissimilar devices.

"Karal!" Master Levy hailed him from the main room. "The teleson is free, and Natoli is on it."

Silverfox cut short Karal's attempt at excusing himself politely. "Go, off with you!" the
kestra'chern
said. "You can talk to me anytime, and I'm not half so pretty as Natoli is."

That last comment made him blush all over again, but this time he didn't care. His long-distance romancing of Natoli appeared to charm everyone. They all stayed discreetly out of the way when he spoke to her, and they all seemed to go out of their way to give him occasions to talk to her on the teleson.

Altra followed on his heels, to act as the facilitator for the conversation. It was amazing that Altra didn't ever tease him about anything that passed between himself and Natoli, but even Altra apparently regarded the growing relationship as a private matter between the two of them, and not for any outsider, not even a Firecat, to intrude upon. No matter what either of the two said to each other, Altra never commented on it, either during the conversation or afterward. In fact, Karal was able to completely forget about Altra's presence most of the time.

But Natoli had disturbing news for him that had nothing whatsoever to do with their personal matters. "Elspeth and Darkwind reported that they are already getting Storms in Hardorn," she said gravely. "They aren't dangerous yet, but it's only a matter of time before things degenerate. We have already started preparations here to handle whatever comes up."

"That's probably why the mages and all finally made up their minds which device to use," he told her. "I suppose Master Levy must have agreed on their choice, since he is the one doing the mathematical modeling for the solution." He hesitated, and looked down at his hands a moment, then looked back up and told her the truth. "I'm going to have to be a Channel again."

She didn't say anything, but her face grew pale and she bit her lip. "Well," she finally managed, "that's what you're there for. You have to do your job, just as I have to do mine." She rallied a bit. "Speaking of my job, I'm in charge of some of the emergency plans. We're going to have to evacuate the Palace at the very least, and maybe even parts of Haven, just in case that node under the Palace goes unstable. All the highborn have gone home, and as of today they've dismissed the Collegia and sent the trainees home as well. Even the Healers have dispersed. The trainees that don't have homes to go to are supposed to go off with their Masters if they're Bards, off to one of the Houses of Healing as Healer-trainees, or riding circuit with full Heralds if they're still in Grays. It's a little crazy around here, since things still have to get done, and it's getting to be that whoever has a pair of hands free just does whatever it takes. They say that the gryphons will stay until the last moment and set spells to keep out looters, then they'll fly away. It'll be a relief when everyone is actually gone."

He didn't have to ask why she was still there; she could not sit back while others were in danger any more than he could. She would probably remain there until the very end because that was what her father would do. Herald Rubrik was in Karse, so perhaps she felt it was up to her to take on the familial duties. "Well," he replied. "You do what you have to, right? If your job is to be there, then you need to do it." Clumsy words, but he hoped they told her what he wanted to say—that he still would never ask her to stop doing what she considered to be her job just to be "safe." If there even
was
any place "safe" anymore. "I want you to know that I really don't think any of us here are in any more or less danger than you are," he continued, trying to give her reassurance. "The one thing I
am
concerned about is that after the last time, the others here are all so fiercely determined to protect me that I'm more afraid for them than I am for myself."

She smiled tremulously. "You would be anyway. Just promise me that you'll let them take care of you. Not at the expense of getting the job done, but let them protect you from what they can."

"If you'll do the same," he demanded. "Before you go flinging yourself into exploding boilers, wait and see if someone more suited to that particular job is already doing it! You know, it just
might
be that, capable as you are, someone else would manage that particular rescue a little better than you!"

"You drive a hard bargain," she retorted, and shook her head, a little of her old humor returning to her eyes. "All right, I promise."

"And so do I," he pledged softly, and basked in her smile.

The wind of a full-scale blizzard howled and whined outside the windows of his suite, and icy drafts forced their way past windows and thick curtains, but Baron Melles didn't care. Enveloped in one of the heavy woolen tunics that had become fashion out of necessity, with a second layer of knitted winter silk beneath that, he brooded pleasantly over the reports of his network of spies within the households of the members of the Court. Virtually every one of those pieces of paper reported a new attitude toward him on the part of anyone of any importance.

Fear
. He was delighted at their reaction. They might hate him, they might envy him, they might (rarely) even admire him for his ruthlessness—but they all feared him now, and feared to have even the appearance of opposing him.

He shifted his weight in his chair, and repositioned his feet on the warming pan beneath his desk. His last object lesson was more effective than he had thought it would be, and had spread far beyond the immediate household and friends of his target. Clearly it was much wiser and more expedient to show that the children of his would-be enemies were vulnerable than it was to threaten the enemies themselves. And as for those who had no children, well, there wasn't a single one of them who didn't have
some
other person for whom they cherished tender feelings. Anyone who would threaten a child obviously would have no difficulty with targeting an aged and infirm parent, or a sibling, or a lover. Even Tremane had dependents he would have been very upset at losing—that old mage, Sejanes, for one.

It was ironic in many ways, for it would have been very easy for any of them to make him or herself invulnerable. There had not been another person besides himself here at Court who had read and understood the lesson old Charliss had given to them in the course of his own life:
Trust no one, care for no one, depend on no one
. They had all persisted, even in the face of obvious disadvantages, to fall in love, make friendships rather than alliances, and allow themselves the cracks in their armor that
relationships
made.

Tremane never knew that he made me what I am today, even as he made me his enemy when we were cadets. He betrayed me to the Colonel, and ruined my career in the Army. And for what? Because I was doing what everyone else wanted to do, but didn't have the intelligence or the audacity to try. I trusted him because he said he was my friend, and he betrayed me. Without that, if I had remained in the cadet corps as he did, I would not have seen Charliss' example for what it was.

He had stopped being a sheep that day and had become one of the wolves—as any of them could have. Well, that was all their own fault, and their stupidity, and that was why he was the Emperor's Heir and not one of them.