Storm Rising (48 page)

“No—” An’desha corrected, his eyes half-closed in thought. “We do have more than that. Mage-Sight should tell us something about the power sources, and
that
should tell us if it’s something we ought to avoid.”

“It might tell usss otherrr thingsss asss well,” Treyvan put in, his ear-tufts rising again.

“And let usss make the bessst transsslationsss we can,” Hydona added. “If we have the choicssse between a devicsse with a good trrranssslation and one with a half trrranssslation, need I sssuggessst which we usssse?”

Firesong rubbed eyes so tired and puffy they were mere slits. In the end, there was only one device they
could
use, and it was not their first or even second choice. Karal had spent the time making himself useful while the mages pondered translations and probed the devices with every tool available to them. Precious time was lost while they did so, but none of them were
wasting any time either. They hardly slept, and ate only when Karal or Silverfox put food in their hands.

And in the end, the shaman himself used his powers, ill-suited as they were to such a task, attempting to help with a selection. His “inspired guess” matched the choice of the mages.

“There’s only one problem,” Firesong said glumly, eyeing the unprepossessing pyramid of silvered metal. “This thing is going to kill whoever activates it. According to Treyvan’s litany and what I’ve gleaned from the destruction information, the rest of us would be able to get far enough away to avoid incineration, but not the person setting it off. It can’t be set off magically, we don’t have anyone who can move things with his mind with us, and when it goes, not even Altra would be able to Jump out in time. Assuming he had two hands with four fingers and a thumb each, which he doesn’t.”

“Unlessss—” Treyvan prompted.

Firesong shrugged. “I don’t see where that could make a difference. The fatal flaw in this thing, and the reason Urtho never used it, is that there’s spillover energy in the physical plane.
Incandescent, white-hot
spillover energy.”

Karal looked from one to the other. “Unless
what?
“ he prompted.

Firesong grimaced, and Treyvan answered. “Unless the perrrssson trrrigerrring it isss a Mage-Channel. He
might
be able to channel the ssspilloverrr enerrrgy to the enerrrgy-planesss wherrre it isss sssupposssed to go.”

“Yes, well, there’s just one little problem with that,” Firesong snapped. “He stands even odds of getting burned out—if he succeeds—and he’ll need to be completely shielded,
and
if he loses control, he’ll
still
get killed along with whoever is shielding him! That assumes we
had
someone who was tough enough to—”

He stopped, suddenly realizing that Karal had gone white as snow, and An’desha, Florian, and Altra were all staring at him. The muscles in his throat tensed as he swallowed.

“I’m a channel,” he said, in a whisper.

Now Firesong stared at him, too, his mind whirling. “You’re a fool if you think you can do this,” he said harshly. “If you thought the Iftel border was hard, it’s
nothing
compared to channeling this thing! You’re not trained, you can’t even
see
mage-energy—”

“But I am a channel,” the young man persisted, though he was still pale and drawn. “And I’ve been told that channeling is instinctive, not learned.”

“You’re going to kill yourself!” Firesong shouted, unable to bear the tension. “You’re out of your mind!
We can’t help you.
You’d have to do this alone! The best we could do is shield you!”

“Is there any other choice?” Karal countered, looking each of them in the eyes. One by one, they each shook their heads. Finally, he came back to Firesong, who clenched his teeth angrily.

“Firesong—we all knew when we came here that we might not come back. We have all resolved in our own ways that we are willing to make sacrifices for even a chance of saving our homelands.” Karal’s facial expression looked like that of a boy ready to cry, but in the way he held his chin up and back straight, he acted like a grown man facing a moment of truth. “I know that if I have to give my life in this, I will be welcome in the Sunlord’s arms.”

How
dare
the whelp put him in this position? How
dare
he volunteer to get himself turned to a cinder before Firesong had a chance to get his own feelings straight?

“Damn you—” he began, but Karal interrupted him with a wan smile.

“I don’t think your curse is capable of overriding Vkandis’ blessing, Hawkbrother,” he chided gently. “But if there is no other choice, I suggest you take it back anyway. I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

“I take it back. But may
all
your children turn out like you!” Firesong exploded, unable to come up with a better “curse” to vent his feelings. He turned violently away and escaped to the empty chamber to pace.
His gut was a solid knot of tensions, his neck felt as stiff as old rawhide.

How can he do this? He’s right, but how can he? This is insane! An’desha will never forgive me!

Soft footsteps at the entrance to the chamber warned him that he was not alone.

“I have to, you know,” Karal said quietly. “I had the feeling it might come to something like this. Altra kept saying he wanted me along for ‘contingency’; I think he must have meant that there was an equal chance you’d have been able to use one of the other devices.” A soft sigh. “The ForeSeers all said that the futures were so tangled they couldn’t see past us getting here. There was always a chance that something else might have worked out.”

“Maybe. If we had more time to study them. If I wasn’t reasonably certain the wave front of the next mage-storm was going to get in
here
as well as everywhere else—this
is
the origin-point, after all. Hellfires! Where else would the energy go but here! And this place can’t keep taking a battering without at least one of these devices going on its own!” He stopped pacing and turned to look into Karal’s white and strained face. “I
do not want
you to do this!”

“I know,” Karal told him.

“But if you’re going to insist—by your gods and mine, I’m not going to stand around outside this place and leave you to do it alone.” In this much, at least, he could assuage his own conscience. “I’ll shield you—”

“We’ll all shield him,” An’desha said, coming up behind Karal. Firesong started to protest, then shrugged. It was their choice, too.

“All right.” He took a deep breath and tried to reckon the time passed. “How much time do we have left? I know it can’t be much.”

“About half a day.” Karal sounded steady enough. Maybe he
could
do it. “I’ve been keeping very careful track. Every mark we delay means the closer the wave front will be to Haven and the Heartstone there. Tremane’s people can weather one more storm, maybe two—”

“But the shielding on the Stone might go down, not to mention all the other Vale Stones, I know, I know.” He suppressed a wave of irritation at Karal for restating the obvious. He let his irritation show as he answered in a growl. “All right, then, if that’s the way you all want it, who am I to argue?”

An’desha looked for a moment as if he might retort, but only turned back to the main room. Karal followed him, leaving Firesong to trail behind, feeling as if he had somehow lost an argument, even though there hadn’t really been one.

They spent their remaining time in rehearsal for the moment. Aya chittered at him from atop the pack as Firesong rummaged deep into the side pocket. He noticed that he was not alone in surreptitiously going to his belongings for stimulants to keep him wide awake and alert; such things were dangerous and they would all pay later—if they survived this—but every mage knew there would be times when there were not enough hours to rest before a vital working, and carried a packet or two of such things. He even caught the shaman chewing a mouthful of something with an expression of distaste that told him it was not dried meat.

Tayledras stimulants had the peculiar quality of setting everything emotional at a distance, enabling Firesong to focus on the purely intellectual project at hand. The mental exercises that sharpened the mind came to him naturally, like a musician practicing his fingerings quicker and quicker. Diagrams of light shone against his lids as he concentrated, eyes closed—symbols for Vale, Veil, Heartstone, ley-line, shield, absorber, deflector, suspensor, buffer—current and anchor, circle and square, star and sphere—they all appeared and interwove. And it occurred to him, as soon as he felt that distancing of his inner turmoil, that there was a
reason
for that pattern in the floor of every storage chamber. The compass rose.

In his peculiarly exalted state, he leaped straight from flash of intuition to a plan, with no conscious reasoning in between.

“Look at this!” he said, as they entered the chamber
for a final rehearsal. “Look, the device is in the exact middle of that inlaid compass rose—it can’t be by accident! This is a shielding-circle!”

An’desha tilted his head to one side and frowned. “It doesn’t look like anything in my memory—” he said tentatively.

“Of course it doesn’t,” Firesong interrupted impatiently. “Your memories are all of Urtho’s arch rival, and if there was a way to do something the opposite of Urtho, you can be certain Ma’ar took it! The positioning is perfect, and I’ll bet there’s an amplification-effect when we set ourselves up and begin the shielding. Look here—the angle from point to point is a factor of eight, with eight points, and sixty-four marker triangles point in. Look at the cupping of those scallops around the center—I’ll bet you all my silk that they’re collectors. Check the angles of deflection from point to point, and they’ll all line up to buttress each other.”

An’desha looked at Treyvan and Hydona for confirmation. The female gryphon wagged her head from side to side. “It could be,” she admitted. “Sssuch thingsss arrre known. Urrrtho wasss known forrr being rrresssouresseful enough forrr sssixty men, beforrre brrreakfassst. It would be in hisss ssstyle to put sssuch thingsss herrre.”

“Then you two—take North and South,” he ordered, feeling as if this must be the proper configuration, though he did not know why. “Florian and Altra, East and West.” That put all the nonhumans on cardinal points, which made a certain sense given what the gryphons had told him about Urtho and how he cherished his nonhuman creations. “Karal, stand in the center with the pyramid. An’desha, you go between Altra and Treyvan in the Northeast. An’desha, I’ll be opposite you—”

But here he stopped, for there were only Lo’isha and Silverfox left, and both were shaking their heads. “I know nothing of shielding,” the Shaman began—

Then, with a sigh and a rush of wings on a wind that existed somewhere other than
here and now
, the other
two places were taken. Light filled the room, and Firesong’s heart leaped straight into his throat.

The last pieces of the puzzle. They have had a hand in this, too—

Standing in the Northwest and Southeast were—

No—

Tre’valen—

“
We have come to help in this
,” said one of the two creatures, part flame, part bird, and part man, with a face that had haunted his few nightmares since the moment he had found the lifeless body of the Shin’a’in shaman struck down by Mornelithe Falconsbane. “
We are still as much of your world as of Hers, and this is, after all, Her chosen land. She wishes it protected, as do we.”

Karal’s eyes glowed with an emotion that Firesong could put no name to, but there was no mistaking the emotion on An’desha’s face. It was pure, unleavened joy. And Firesong knew, truly, and with a settling of peace in his heart, that he had not “lost” An’desha to any human or any human arguments. There was no use arguing when someone heard the call of the Star-Eyed in his soul. That siren song was as unbreakable as any lifebond, and as enduring.

The other bird-human-spirit spoke. “
An’desha knows—we have been with you, aiding where we could—but the Star-Eyed helps only those with the bravery to help themselves. We have come of our own volition, and live or die, we stand beside you.”

Lo’isha was on his knee with his head bowed, and the creature who had once been Tre’valen, himself a shaman, gestured to him to rise. The shaman did so, but wearing an expression so awestruck that Firesong doubted he would say
anything
as long as the two Avatars were there.

But as Firesong turned his attention back to the circle, he realized he knew what that look in Karal’s eyes was.

It was the look of someone who knows he is about to die, but whose faith is certain and confirmed and
who is no longer afraid of the prospect. “Fey,” some called it.

Perhaps, as Stefen bid him farewell in the mountains of the North, Vanyel had looked that way….

But it was too late now to do anything about it. The last few moments were trickling away.

“Raise your shields!” he shouted, his throat tight, as he brought up his own. To Mage-Sight, each of them now stood within a glowing sphere of rainbow light, and as he had somehow divined, each point on the compass rose glowed as well. The light radiating from each of them reflected from the angled patterns outlined in the stone. It looked as though, if they survived this, he wouldn’t owe anyone his silk.

“Link shields!” he cried out, before his throat closed too much to speak. There was a moment of faltering, then all of the shields formed into a thick ring of light surrounding Karal and the waist-high pyramid in the center. The young man closed his eyes and placed his hands carefully on two of the sides, fitting his fingers into the depressions placed there for that purpose.

But once again, as Firesong had guessed, older magics were activated by the energies of their shields. The design on the floor began to glow, sending up eight arms of light that pulled the shields with them, until they all met in a point, making a cone of radiance that echoed the conical shape of the walls around them. Instead of being merely ringed with shielding, Karal was encased in it, and the energy that he would release would be funneled straight up by the shields.