Storm Warning (55 page)

He feinted again, and Karal flinched. He obviously knew what he was doing; he had all the moves of an experienced knife fighter. Karal’s best bet was to keep him talking.

But Celandine rushed him; he ducked and sidestepped and barely managed to avoid the knife
and
the mallet blow aimed at his head.

“If I get you, I can leave you in the garden with one of Elspeth’s knives in your heart,” he continued. “We made copies, you know, just in case. You know the one I’m talking about.”

“Actually, no I don’t—”

Altra’s mind-voice was frantic.
:Karal! I can’t get him! You’re in my line of attack!:

Karal stepped to the side at once, but Celandine lashed out viciously with the mallet, and he stepped back again hastily.

“The one Elspeth left in the heart of
our
ambassador, of course!” Celandine said, as if he was some kind of dolt. Then he blinked. “You’re playing for time!” he accused, and slashed at Karal with the knife.

:Karal! There’s poison on that knife! Stay out of reach
—
use something as a shield.:

A shield—something Celandine wouldn’t want damaged !

He grabbed one of the canvases at random as Celandine drove him back, and held it in front of him as he backed toward the windows. Celandine’s mouth twisted in a snarl.

“Put that thing down, you idiot!”
he screamed. “How
dare
you put your hands on—”

He never finished the sentence.

There was a crash of glass as all the windows shattered at once. Karal ducked instinctively, crouching and making himself as small a target as possible as shards of razored glass went everywhere. Celandine came up out of his fighting crouch in shock and glanced around wildly—

Then a dozen crossbow bolts hit him at once from the direction of every window; his body jerked wildly in a grotesque parody of a dance—

—then he dropped to the floor, eyes already glazing in death.

Karal dropped to the floor as well, as his knees gave out.

“Karal!” Kerowyn leapt through one of the broken windows and crashed through the easels to get to him, knocking paintings in all directions. “Karal, are you all right? Did he scratch you? Sayvil said there was poison on his blade. Are you—”

“I’m all right, I’m fine,” he replied weakly. “Oh, dear Sunlord, I have
never
been as grateful for any lessons in my life as I am for yours.” He hugged the painting to his chest, and took deep, steadying breaths. “He was going to kill me and leave me with a copy of one of Elspeth’s knives in me. He said they got it when she left one in
their
ambassador.”

He was babbling and he knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself. Altra finally wormed his way through the tangle of art supplies and tumbled easels, and began winding around and around him frantically, purring loud enough to make both of them vibrate.

“Elspeth’s knife?” A large man climbed over the windowsill with a crossbow in each hand; after a moment, Karal’s mind put a name to him. Skif. He wasn’t a mage, but he often sat on the Council with Kerowyn.

“Elspeth’s knife?” the man repeated, scowling ferociously. “Demons take it, I
knew
that thing was going to come back to haunt us!”

Karal started to shiver, when he happened to look down to see just what painting he had snatched up as an impromptu shield.

Ulrich’s warm, amused eyes gazed up at him; he froze for a moment, then burst into tears.

:Are you sure that you’re ready for this?:
Altra asked anxiously
. :This is going to be very dangerous for you.:

Karal shrugged, and shook his head.

“Actually, I’m quite sure that I’m not at all ready for a confrontation like this,” he admitted to the Firecat. “But we just don’t have a choice. An‘desha needs help; besides being afraid of allowing his emotions free play, he’s locking down his anger because he is certain that if he lets it go, he’ll
use
his powers to hurt whoever he’s angry at. The problem with doing that is that it just makes things harder for him the next time he’s angry.” Karal rubbed the side of his nose thoughtfully. “He has to discover that ‘control’ doesn’t always mean ‘containment.’ He’s got to see that the simplest solution isn’t always the right one.”

The Firecat washed a paw thoughtfully. :
I saw how he was when they told him how near you’d come to being killed—both times,: he said. :Terrible anger—then nothing. He just turned it all inside himself.:

“Terrible anger is dangerous when you are—or were—an Adept who specialized in destruction,” Karal said grimly. “Someone has to prove to him that he can lose his temper and his self-control, vent his emotions, and not hurt anyone in the process.
Then
he’ll feel safe enough to go after those very emotional memories of Adept Ma‘ar and learn all the destructive magic that Ma’ar knew. Firesong thinks the Ma’ar memories are important ; I
know
that they have to be the key to this situation. I can’t tell you why I’m so certain, I only know that I am.”

Hurry, hurry, hurry.
That sense of terrible urgency made
him
as tight as a strung crossbow. The sense that time was running out on them was stronger than ever.

:But are you the best person to do that?:
Altra asked, with complete logic.
Shouldn’t it be someone who’s also a mage, who can defend against his attack if he should lash out? He can turn you into a cinder, and you haven’t got any kind of protection.:
The Firecat looked up at him with large, bottomless blue eyes, full of candor and concern.
:l’m not completely certain even I could protect you against his full power, in a killing rage.:

Karal sighed. “That’s why it has to be me. It has to be someone so completely vulnerable that An‘desha
knows
that person is defenseless. It has to be someone who knows An’desha well enough to make him rage with anger in a very short time. Firesong won’t do; Firesong could hold his own against any attack An‘desha could launch, and what would that prove? And it has to be done, because if it isn’t, I think he’ll be incinerated. Talia and Firesong both agree with me. If he keeps turning his anger inward, one day his power will turn inward as well, and it will consume him.”

:And besides,:
Altra added,
:he’s your friend.:

“That’s right,” Karal agreed. “He’s my friend. Friends help friends. We’re both strangers in this Valdemar place. Sometimes friends are all we have.”

He didn’t have to mention all the nights this past week that An‘desha had held him while he wept out his grief for Ulrich; Altra knew all about that, since he’d been there. He didn’t say a word about the thousand little kindnesses that An’desha had shown him since—and the way he had gently deflected Firesong’s resulting jealousy. None of that really mattered anyway. What did matter was that An’desha needed help, and it was help that Karal could give him.

In the larger picture, if he
didn’t
help An’desha, they might never have their “breakwaters” to use against the disruption-waves. The latest one had caught at least one large animal that Karal knew of, turning it into a monstrous killer that had savaged an entire herd of cattle before twenty men shot it full of arrows. Word had trickled back that the Tayledras Vales were suffering damage to their special shielding. According to Master Levy, the engineers and mathematicians had constructed a pattern of increasing power to these waves. Natoli had explained it to him, and he had felt the jaws of time closing on them.
Something
had to be done, and done quickly.

It had taken Karal the better part of the afternoon to work up the courage to face this particular trial. It had been relatively easy to steel his nerve to face a possible enemy, but to have to face a friend who just might kill him—that took a different kind of courage altogether.

Now, though, he was as prepared as he was ever likely to be. An’desha was hiding down in the tent in the garden, already shaken by a preparatory confrontation with Firesong, carefully planned and choreographed by Karal and the Healing Adept beforehand. The effects of the last disruption-wave were over, which meant there would be no interference from that quarter. Now, if ever, was the perfect moment.

As always, his eyes met the painted eyes of Ulrich in the portrait he’d hung on his wall.
I hope I’m doing the right thing, Master,
he told the painting silently.
I’m not as sure of this as Altra and Firesong think I am.

He really didn’t expect an answer from the portrait, and he wasn’t surprised when he didn’t get one. He tugged his tunic into place, and headed down the stairs into the garden.

An‘desha had been getting alarmingly predictable in his reactions to emotional confrontation; now that Karal had the fabric-draped room—for Kerowyn did not want to risk another assassination attempt and ordered him to stay in the
ekele
for the duration, or at least until Solaris sent official word of what she intended to do—An’desha had no other refuge than the small tent in the garden. Whenever he was upset or had an argument with anyone, that was where he went.

He had been spending a lot of time in that tent, and the number of times in a given day he was retreating to it was increasing.

Karal nodded to Firesong, who was lurking just out of An‘desha’s hearing. Firesong’s jaw tightened, and he nodded curtly back. Firesong didn’t like this any better than Altra did; he liked his part in it even less.
He
was going to have to create a very tough mirror-shield around that tent to hold in whatever An’desha let loose.

He pulled the tent flap aside and dropped down on his heels next to An’desha, who was sprawled on his back with his arm over his face, cushioned by a pallet identical to the one that Karal now used for a bed upstairs.

“Down here again?” Karal said incredulously. “What’s wrong this time?”

An‘desha didn’t even remove his arm. “Firesong. He does
not
understand. He wishes me to sift through the memory fragments of Ma’ar again.” An’desha’s hands clenched into fists, and his mouth tightened, sulkily. “He will not understand. Those memories are very old, and to read them I must grow very close to them.”

“So?” Karal let scorn creep into his voice. “I think that Firesong is right, An’desha. You aren’t thinking of anyone or anything but your own self. You are, quite frankly, becoming a spoiled brat. We have been coddling you, making allowances for you, and now you have no more spine than a mushroom!”

An’desha sat up, suddenly, his mouth agape with shock, staring at Karal with a dumbfounded expression. “Wh-what?” he stammered.

“You are
spineless,
An‘desha!” Karal accused. “You know yourself that what we need lies in
your
mind, and you are too frightened to even
try
to look for it!” He let his own expression grow pitiful and petulant, and pitched his voice into a whine.
“‘Those memories are dangerous, they might hurt
me,
I am afraid of them—’
as if we all aren’t afraid of much worse than a few paltry memories!”

“But I—” An’desha began, his eyes glazed with shock at the way Karal had abruptly turned on him.

“But you. Always you. What about the rest of us?” Karal asked. “What about all that we have been doing? What about the
losses,
the harm that we have suffered, while you have been curled here in your little cocoon of self-pity, feeling, oh, so put-upon? What about the Tayledras, who are trying to piece their Vales together again, the Shin’a’in who fear their herds of precious horses will turn into herds of monsters—what about the Shin’a’in ambassador who
died
a few days ago? What about them? What about Karse? And Rethwellan?”

An‘desha was on his feet now as he tried to push past Karal. Karal shoved him back rudely, not letting him leave the tent, and evidently it never occurred to him that he could just turn and slash his way through the walls to get away. An’desha backed up a pace, and Karal shoved him again, getting right up close and shouting into his face.

“You are a spineless, lazy, selfish
coward,
An’desha,” he spat. “You’ve been playing the poor little wounded bird for too long! I have had quite enough of this, and so has everyone else! It is about time you started doing something to help, instead of whining about how
afraid
you are! We’re
all
afraid, or hadn’t you noticed?
I
was afraid, when Celandine nearly killed me, but you didn’t see
me
whining about it, did you? You don’t hear Firesong whining about how exhausted he is, even though he is working on shields until he is gray in the face!”

An’desha’s face had flushed to a full, rich crimson.