Storm breaking (6 page)

"Oh, I agree, but it is not my opinion you must have," Lo'isha began, then shrugged again. "Or, well, perhaps it is. I suppose I have as much authority here as the Kal'enedral." He grimaced. "Much as I dislike taking on authority, I suppose it is time that I did so."

Since it was Firesong's opinion that it was more than time that he did so, he simply nodded and held his tongue.

Karal looked fatigued, and Firesong stood up abruptly. "I am going to search for another hidden room. I have the feeling that this place hasn't even begun to divulge its secrets to us. Anyone care to join me?"

Urtho may have been one of the most brilliant and compassionate minds in history—but his architects were no small geniuses themselves. Firesong already had found one small, hidden room by carefully probing the floor of the "washing" room when he noticed that water, dripped in a particular place, drained away through cracks invisible to the unaided eye. it hadn't held anything—in fact, it had probably performed the task of simple storage—but now he knew that there
might
be more such places under the floors here, and he had the feeling that if he just looked hard enough, he might find more than just storage areas.

"I'll help," An'desha said unexpectedly.

He smiled. "Come along, then," he replied. "I'm trying the skull chamber next."

The "skull chamber" was the one in which they had discovered a bizarre contraption that looked like the leavings of half a dozen Artificers and shamans all jumbled together with the remains of a few feasts. The centerpiece was a highly ornamented cow skull, and none of them could even begin to guess what the device was for. They would have been afraid to dismantle it, except that the delicate construction had already fallen apart in several places already, and the shock of their magical working had made it fall completely to pieces without any other ill effect.

Rather than use magic, since the chamber itself reeked of mage-power, Firesong was using perfectly ordinary senses; taking a cue from the water drainage, he had a skin of water with a bit of ink in it to make it more visible, and he dribbled it over the floor, watching to see if it moved or vanished.

With An'desha helping, the two of them were a lot more effective than he was by himself. It was very boring work, and he had expected An'desha to start a conversation, but he had not anticipated the subject.

"You're thinking about going back, aren't you?" An'desha said. "To k'Leshya, if not your home Vale."

He didn't reply at first; he pretended to be paying close attention to the water on the floor. "I'm not used to this sort of living," he said, refusing to answer directly. "It's harder on me than it is on you."

"I won't debate that," An'desha agreed. "And I hope you don't think I'd put any blame on you for leaving. The gryphons did."

"But they have two children who need them," he snapped. "I don't. I haven't any excuse for leaving except wanting to be comfortable again!" He felt irrationally irritated at An'desha for voicing all of
his
excuses, as if he were so transparent that An'desha had no difficulty in anticipating what he wanted to do and his rationalizations.

The trouble was that every time he looked at Karal, he felt ashamed of himself.

"It's not as if you haven't done more than most people would have already," An'desha said gently. "First you faced down Falconsbane—"

"Mornelithe Falconsbane was a challenge, but no more than that," he replied stiffly. "It's not as if I was alone in facing him."

"It's not as if you had any real reason to," An'desha pointed out inexorably. "Valdemar wasn't your home. Falconsbane didn't threaten the Vales. You'd done your duty in training Heralds to be mages, and then some. You could have gone home once you'd done that much."

"Leaving whom to face Falconsbane?" Firesong demanded, his face flushing. "One of those half-trained Heralds? Elspeth? Darkwind, perhaps? None of them could have freed you. I'm not certain even Need could have freed you and dealt with Falconsbane."

An'desha simply nodded quietly. "But when it was over—you could have gone home then. You could even have taken me with you, and things might have turned out differently. You've long since gone past anything anyone could call your duty, Firesong. No one would fault you if you were too tired of all this to go on."

"And how am I going to compare to someone like Karal if I do that?" he demanded, flushing still further. "Too tired? How would I look, quitting now, next to someone who literally put his life in jeopardy over this?"

"You make him sound like a would-be martyr," An'desha chided. "Karal is quite a few things, including stubborn, occasionally bigoted, and now and then incredibly naive, but he's no martyr. And neither are you, nor any of us."

"So?" Aya must have felt his distress; the firebird sailed in the chamber door, adroitly avoided the snare of wires and junk, and landed on his shoulder. He petted the bondbird reflexively in a blind search for comfort. "If he's not a martyr, then—" He stopped, aware that his voice was getting high and strained.

He took two or three deep breaths. "An'desha, I don't know why you're baiting me this way."

Then, in a moment of blinding insight, he
did
know.

He's forcing me to think things through, so that I come to a real decision, instead of letting some unfinished business and an entire bundle of emotions sway me back and forth
.

An'desha nodded, as if he saw all that written on Firesong's face.

I can't make a decision because I'm trying to demonstrate that I'm somehow better than Karal. And I can't make it out of guilt either.

So why am I staying?

"What Karal does is up to Karal, but—well, I'm not too old to take a youngster like him as a good example." He smiled weakly. "You all need me, just as you need Sejanes or Master Levy, or Altra. I'm staying because even though I'm tired and I hate living here, it would be wrong of me to go off and leave you without my skills. I don't want to die in the cold and filth, but if I must, I will. It would be wrong to abandon all those people who are hoping we'll find a solution to the final Storm. It would be wrong to break my word to the people I promised I would help. Are those reasons good enough for you?"

An'desha laughed at that. "Don't think to bait me, Firesong; I was coached by an expert to steer you through your own thoughts and motives."

He scowled at that. "Are you happy with the result?" he growled.

"The question is not whether I'm satisfied, it's whether you are," An'desha countered. "And if you are, it is not for me to object. If your decision will interfere with other concerns, then that must be dealt with then."

He stood up and moved over to another section of floor. Firesong felt an imp of perversity rise inside him, and he knew he had to have the last word.

"And I didn't mention the best reason of all yet," he said silkily. Surprised, An'desha turned back to face him.

"What reason is that?" he asked, as if the words had been pulled from him unwillingly.

Firesong smiled. "Silverfox wants me to stay," he replied. "Can you think of a better reason?"

Elspeth sighed, her breath streaming out in a fog of ice-crystals, and pulled the ends of the scarf wrapped around her neck a little tighter. Once again she sent a little thought of gratitude back over her shoulder toward Valdemar and the tireless k'Leshya
hertasi
who had fashioned her current costume. The little lizard-folk who had arrived with the bargeload of envoys from Clan k'Leshya had taken one look at her winter wardrobe and taken it upon themselves to refashion it, as if they didn't already have enough to do. The
hertasi
of k'Sheyna had already made her Herald's Whites in the style of the Tayledras, but those had all been of summer-weight fabrics. These new
hertasi
had remade her Whites in wool, fur, and leather, layered in silk according to patterns designed for her by Darkwind. These had been her Midwinter gift from him to her, and a welcome surprise they had been indeed, for they were certainly needed. Winter Field Whites
had
been designed for harsh weather, but not as harsh as the unprecedented weather currently holding Hardorn in its icy grip.

And Hardorn was where she, Darkwind, and a small group of mixed Valdemaran Guards and Kerowyn's mercenaries found themselves headed shortly after Midwinter Festival.

There hadn't been much choice; it was clear that Valdemar was going to have to send some form of envoy overland to Grand Duke Tremane, once it became impossible to put up any more Gates. Elspeth had been present when that last Gate had been attempted; the mangled crate that had come through had looked as if it had been turned inside out, and nothing in it was recognizable. It was just a good thing that the crate had only contained a few things for Sejanes and that they had been cautious enough to test the Gate with mere cargo before sending anyone living through.

But travel to and within Hardorn was not easy by any standard, even those of one who had journeyed from Valdemar to the Dhorisha Plains and patrolled the weirdling lands being cleansed and protected by a Hawkbrother Vale. In all of her life she had never seen snow this deep. The road they followed into Hardorn had been kept clear for traffic, but only enough to permit a cart pulled by two horses to pass. And even then, the wheels of the cart would scrape the walls of snow now and again. Every ten leagues a wider place had been cut, so that carts going in opposite directions could pass, but otherwise the snow was piled up on either side of the road until it reached shoulder-high on a horse. In places where the snow had drifted deeper than that, it could be taller than a rider's head. And the cold, the
wind
—In many ways, she was grateful that those tall snowbanks were there, because without that shelter they'd be facing a wind that bit as cruelly as any blade, and carried right down to the bone.
Hertasi
-designed tunics with fur linings and riding coats of sheepskin with the wool turned inside were the only things that made this journey bearable. She was quite grateful that the mysterious, industrious lizard-folk had been able to outfit the entire company with such coats before they all left.

"Why the sigh?" Darkwind asked, his breath puffing out in frosty clouds with each word. His bondbird Vree clung to the padded horn of his saddle, with no sign of discomfort whatsoever—except that his feathers were puffed out all over his body and his head was pulled down tight against his shoulders, so that he resembled a fat ball of wool with a beak. But then, Vree was a forestgyre, and Darkwind had once told her that they had come from stock adapted to harsher climes than this. Darkwind himself cut an odd figure, and not just because of his Hawkbrother costume or the bondbird on his saddlebow; Darkwind's mount was neither a horse nor a Companion, but a creature as intelligent and as foreign to Valdemaran eyes as a gryphon. It was a
dyheli
, a white
dyheli
at that, and the representative of his own race to Valdemar. His name was Brytha, and he had brought Firesong from k'Treva to k'Sheyna, then from k'Sheyna to Valdemar, and now consented to bear Darkwind on this current mission. Why? She didn't know; Darkwind didn't know either, and the
dyheli
seemed disinclined to explain. They were both grateful to him; although not the equal in endurance and speed of a Companion, the
dyheli
was better suited to this mission than a horse, more sure-footed and vastly more intelligent. The rest of their party rode tough Shin'a'in-bred horses, especially selected for endurance, shaggy as dogs with blunt, blocky heads.

"I'm sighing because I've decided that the one thing I will never say again is to say 'never again,'" she replied with a crooked smile. "Because as sure as I say it, I'm forced to repeat the act I swore never to repeat."

He chuckled ruefully, without needing any explanation. Neither of them had ever thought they would be riding back into Hardorn again. Their previous visit, although memorable, had not been particularly pleasant, either for them or for the Hardornens. When they had finished, mad King Ancar and his adviser Hulda were dead at their hands, mage-caused storms were lashing the countryside, the capital was in a state of total chaos, and the Imperial Army (taking advantage of the moment) was pouring over the Eastern border. And although very few Hardornens were aware of the fact, Elspeth and Darkwind were directly or indirectly responsible for most of the damage and chaos they left behind them.

Not that the Imperial Army was our fault, but that's just about the only thing we can say we didn't have a hand in.

And after the invasion came the real mage-storms, triggering incredibly vicious weather and unleashing real horrors on the unsuspecting countryside.
Those
were not the fault of anyone living, but they did make life in Hardorn even more miserable than anyone had ever dreamed possible. So riding into Hardorn didn't seem particularly likely or sane a few moons ago.

But that had been before Duke Tremane offered alliance; before it dawned on everyone in this part of the world that the mage-storms were a greater menace than anything mere humans could unleash on each other. Now things that wouldn't have occurred to anyone as possible scenarios were being hastily put into motion.

"Have you noticed something? The weather might be vile, but the
land
isn't suffering anymore," Darkwind observed. "It's not exhausted and ill anymore, it's just sleeping, waiting for spring. I don't know about you, but that was one of the reasons why I didn't want to ever come back here again."