Storm Rising (44 page)

Cheers rang out across the room, although Karal’s mind was only on Natoli. He let out a whoop, and threw his handful of pebbles into the air. An’desha yelped and dropped the hoop he was holding onto to cover his head with his hands as pebbles showered down around him.

The hoop and one of the stones hit the water simultaneously, the stone falling in the middle of the area enclosed by the hoop. An’desha ignored it, vaulting across benches to join Karal in a back-slapping indulgence of relief.

But Master Levy ignored
them
, leaning over to peer intently at the water-table.

When they finally stopped acting like a pair of demented idiots, he beckoned imperiously to An’desha. “Get over here, would you? Something interesting happened this time.”

Heads turned all over the room at that, and a sudden silence fell, for Master Levy never used the term “interesting” unless something of cosmic portent had
occurred or been calculated. An’desha trotted back to his place beside Master Levy and picked the hoop up out of the water.

Master Levy picked up a stone.

He gave the signal to An’desha to drop the hoop, and at the same time dropped the stone into the exact center of the area defined by the hoop.

“There,” he said, as An’desha leaned over the table. “Where the two sets of waves meet—you see?”

“They’re canceling each other,” An’desha breathed. “The water isn’t exactly smooth, but it’s just a minor disturbance. It jitters … it breaks up.”

Darkwind rose to his feet with alacrity, Elspeth following. “Do that again!” he ordered. “I want to see this.”

Others quickly gathered around the table, including those who had only come here on the chance that there was word about the injured students. The experiment was repeated, over and over again, with the stone being dropped simultaneously with the hoop, a heartbeat after the hoop was dropped, and a heartbeat before. In all cases, the waves in the water caused by the hoop were at least partially canceled by the waves from the dropped stone.

And the trick worked best when the stone was dropped in the exact center of the area defined by the hoop.

“This is it,” Master Levy breathed, his eyes lighting.

“But how are we going to set up an opposing force, in the proper modulation, that will cancel the mage-storm waves?”

Karal came back to hear Master Levy ask one of his typically brutally precise questions. He would rather have been at Natoli’s side, but the Healers still weren’t letting anyone in with the students. Now he was back, half a candlemark later, and the discussions were still going strong.

“More magic, like a Final Strike,” Darkwind replied promptly. “The storms were caused by magic. We can set up a canceling force by magic, something that
releases an immense amount of energy all at once. We’ve canceled magic before—we do that all the time to blunt effects, in containment spells—those are just spells that exactly counter the force coming out of someone or something.” Now his face lit up as well. “That’s our answer, for now at least! We can’t replicate something that will exactly duplicate the force of the original Cataclysm, but I bet we can come close enough to buy us some more time! Or at least—”

“But—” Master Levy began.

Darkwind waved at him, and he closed his mouth on whatever he was going to say. “Or at least clip the top off those waves. I don’t know how, but I know that there has to be a way. We’ve got mages from four different disciplines here, and if among all of us we can’t find an answer, I’ll eat my boots without sauce!”

“I hope you have a taste for leather,” Master Levy muttered, but only Karal heard him.

“I’ll reconvene the mages in the Grand Council chamber,” Elspeth said, and ran off before anyone could stop her—not that they wanted to. Darkwind looked at An’desha, who shrugged.

“We might as well,” he opined. “It isn’t even dark yet. We have the whole night to argue.”

The group, when it finally assembled, included not only the mages of the Tayledras, Sejanes, the k’Leshya mages, and the White Winds mages who were still teaching at the Collegium, it also included Karal, Altra, Lo’isha the Sworn-Shaman of the Shin’a’in, and one of the Karsite Mage-Priests who had fought Ancar, the same one who had saved Natoli’s father’s life. They had to use the Grand Council chamber as there was no other room large enough to hold not one, but four gryphons. Master Levy had the water-table emptied, brought to the chamber, and refilled so that he could demonstrate their discovery.

All of those present leaned over the table with extreme interest; Master Levy and An’desha demonstrated their experiment many times over so that everyone got a chance to see what was going on in detail.

“Now,” the Master Artificer said, when everyone had looked his fill, “I am out of my depth. I leave it to you to determine if this model is accurate to the situation, and if so, what can be done about it.”

“For a beginning, my people back in Shonar have been measuring the strength, duration, and timing of the storm-waves,” Sejanes said briskly. “We have all of those that occurred right up until the moment I departed, but in the interests of complete accuracy, we should get the most recent. If my lord cat over there will take a message—”

Altra bowed his head gracefully.

“—I can get them to send the most recent of their records, and we can work out just how large an event we’ll have to create for the canceling effect.” Sejanes scribbled a brief message, and Altra paced across the table to take it from him. The Firecat vanished; by now the mages were so used to the way he came and went that they paid no attention.

“We do have a major problem,” Master Levy pointed out. “We have, not one, but two event-centers, and one is absolutely inaccessible unless you happen to be a fish.”

“That’s true,” said one of the human k’Leshya mages, “but the real problems are occurring where the waves intersect. Those are the places where weather disruptions are forming, where monsters are created, and where there is transportation of land. We might find that if we only have to deal with one set of waves, the effect on magic would be temporary and can be shielded against for a time if we can just cancel out the Dhorisha waves.”

Master Levy shrugged and spread his hands. “I make no pretense that I understand magic; I only observe and deduce what I can.”

Sejanes cackled and slapped him on the back. The old man was stronger than he looked; Master Levy actually staggered for a moment. “Hiding arrogance behind false modesty, boy? Don’t bother; we all know we’re in elite company, and you’re included in that.
Now, the question is, just what is our pebble going to be?”

“The generating force is going to have to be powerful,” Darkwind said soberly. “Very powerful. I need to point out, friends, that I do not think it is going to be possible to generate anything powerful enough to counter that final wave—the echo of the Cataclysm itself. Not without creating another Dhorisha, another Evendim. And I don’t think any of us want to do that.”

“So far as that goes, I don’t particularly want a massive explosion in the heart of my homeland,” Lo’isha put in. “We rather like the Plains the way they are, and I’m not certain we can persuade the Star-Eyed to put it back if we ruin it a second time, however lofty our motives.”

“No—now wait a moment,” Sejanes interrupted. “The problem is that the original Cataclysm was the result of two events, both intended to do the maximum in physical damage. Remember?
Physical
damage. Your Mage of Silence wanted to destroy his enemy’s entire force,
and
destroy his own Tower so that if the enemy somehow survived, he wouldn’t be able to find anything to use. But if
all
we want to do is to send out a counter in the energy-plane of magic, is there any reason why we can’t just do that, channel all of the released energy into the energy-planes? Frankly, tearing up huge tracts of land is rather wasteful of power we could focus elsewhere!”

Darkwind opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, then got a thoughtful look on his face and shut it again. One of the new gryphons, a burly hawk-type, clacked his beak thoughtfully. “If we concssentrrrated the powerrr in that plane, we could do morrre with lesss enerrrgy than the Cataclyssssm itssself requirrred.”

“Or more specifically, on the ‘edge’ between planes where the waves brush against our world, and cause the physical damage,” Elspeth chimed in. The gryphon nodded firmly.

“Which brings us around to the question again, and that is
how?
We need a focused burst,” Sejanes said,
“and not a sustained release. Most of us are not used to thinking in those terms; the only focused bursts of energy I’
m
used to creating are lightning strikes and similar unpleasantness. Or Final Strikes, but the mage who does one isn’t going to survive the experience, and I’d like to survive.”

Lo’isha looked very, very thoughtful and stood up, clearing his throat and getting everyone’s attention. All activity slowed and stopped, and attention went to the Shin’a’in.

“For the sake of clarity, I am going to impart something that some of you may already know,” he said. “This was once a closely-guarded secret among my people, but there is a time when secrets need to be revealed. After the Cataclysm, all of the people formerly known as the Kaled’a’in—”

“Except for Clan k’Leshya—” interrupted a k’Leshya mage.

“Yes, except for k’Leshya—gathered at the edge of the crater that had once been their homeland—which was also the place where Urtho’s Tower had stood. They divided over how magic was to be dealt with in the future, and became the two cousin-peoples, the Shin’a’in and the Tayledras. To the Hawkbrothers, who chose to follow the ways of the mage still, the Star-Eyed Goddess gave the task of cleansing the lands warped by the magics of the Cataclysm. To the Shin’a’in, who chose to ever after
avoid
the use of all magics save those of the Shaman, she gave another task.” He paused, closing his eyes for a moment. “In exchange for this, she restored our home, and since we were vowed to use no magic, we did not experience the effects of the mage-storms of the time. The task we were given was to guard the Plains from all outsiders. This much is common knowledge. What is
not
common knowledge is the reason for the task. In the center of the Plains, at a site known only to the Sworn of the four faces of the Goddess, lie the remains of Urtho’s Tower. Buried beneath the surface are the weapons Urtho did not and would not use. They are very powerful. And they are still alive and ready for use,
according to our traditions. At least one of these should be the very thing that we need.”

The Shin’a’in drew his dagger and laid it flat on the table. “It is time to end the Guardianship.”

Jaws were dropping all around the table, Karal’s not the least.

“Here is the one problem that I foresee—and given that we have our Kaled’a’in brothers and sisters of k’Leshya with us, this may be less of a problem than I had thought,” the Sworn One continued. “Once we unearth the weapons’ vault, which should still be intact, we will have to search through what is there to find a suitable weapon. And we will have to determine how to make it work, or how to adapt it to our need.” He smiled slightly. “Needless to say, Urtho did not leave an inventory nor a book of instructions with them.”

Karal realized he had stopped breathing with surprise, and forced himself to take a deep lungful of air.

Treyvan shook his feathers, and nibbled a talon. “I rrrecall a litany, much like the Tayledrrrasss litany of ‘frrriendly beassstss,’ that we magesss of k’Lessshya arrre all rrrequirred to learrrn.”

“The ‘Garland of Death,’ of course,” supplied one of the humans. “That
could
be an inventory and set of descriptions! But I always thought it was just a memory-exercise with a particularly morbid name—”

“And ssso it isss,” Treyvan agreed. “But like ssso many thingsss in ourrr teaching, it hasss morrre than one purrrpossse, I think.”

“Another problem—” said a voice from the door. Firesong strode in, with Silverfox beside him. “I beg your pardon for being late, but I was checking some calculations of my own. Ladies and gentlemen, we knew we were chasing a deadline, but I now know the exact moment of that deadline. How are we to get to the Dhorisha Plains before the breakwater collapses? We have only until a fortnight after Midwinter Day to reach the Plains—in the winter, across two countries. Then we must travel to the center of the Plains, and
sort through the contents of this Vault. Just how are we to manage that?”

Silence. Then, into the silence, Elspeth spoke.

“There is a permanent Gate near k’Leshya Vale on the rim of the crater,” she said. “There must be—Fal-consbane vanished from there, and how else—”

“Yes!”
An’desha shouted excitedly. “There is, I remember! I know right where it is! But how are we going to reach there from here?”

“Piffle. A trifle,” said Sejanes.

Now all eyes turned to him, as he smiled broadly and presented his knowledge to them as a wise old grandfather presenting candy to a room full of children.

“We of the Empire are the Masters of Portals—you call them Gates. We can find them at great distances, we can key into strange Portals, and we can build Portals that are permanent structures. But most of all, we know how to construct them using energies outside of ourselves, or the joined energies of several mages.” His smile broadened, and he spread his hands wide. “I can teach even the apprentices among you how to join together with a single Adept to construct such a Portal, and given that another permanent Portal will anchor the other end, we should be able to make it self-sustaining for a limited time. Will
that
serve as our means to your ruined Tower?”

After all the tumultuous months of bickering, near-blood-feud, fear, derision, and anger, they held more than just nebulous hope in their hands. Inventive minds, people of different cultures and backgrounds, had come together and despite the friction between them, had held on to reason. It all sounded too easy, to hear it spoken in series—and yet, the pieces had all been there. Once the need was identified, they slipped into formation like well-trained soldiers. Karal was dazed at how nearly they had escaped disaster—