Storm Warning

questions.

'What—who—' Firesong began. Karal answered the questions as best he could.

'My name is Karal, sir,' he said, 'I'm a friend of An'desha's. I'll tell you about that later. You've probably seen me during Council sessions, with my master Ulrich, the Karsite envoy. I think you've sprained your ankle, and it probably hurts like anything; can you flex your toes, then your foot, carefully?'

Grimacing with pain, Firesong did so. 'I—ah!—if I can do this, nothing is broken. Find An'desha,' the Adept ordered. 'Tell me the rest when we know he's all right.'

'Yes, sir.' Karal left the Hawkbrother sitting on the floor of the ekele massaging his ankle, and sprinted up to the kitchen, calling An'desha's name as he ran. The third time he called, he got an answer.

'Here,' An'desha said. 'Here—' Karal found him in a small room, draped to look like the inside of a tent. His friend was curled up in a ball on the floor, but it didn't look as if he was hurt. Karal dropped to his knees beside the young mage.

'An'desha?' he said, touching the mage's arm tentatively.

'I am all right, Karal,' An'desha whispered, slowly opening his eyes. 'I believe it is over for now.'

'You didn't hurt yourself, did you?' Karal asked anxiously.

'No—I felt it building, and something warned me to fall to the ground.' An'desha blinked, as if he was forcing his eyes to focus again. 'It is well I did so. I think—I think this, or something like this, is what I have been fearing.' He blinked again, and astonishment and relief spread over his features.

'Karal? That dread I was feeling, waiting for something terrible to come—it is gone!'

'Can you stand?' Karal asked anxiously. 'Can you walk? Your friend Firesong is hurt, and—'

He was not able to get anything more out of his mouth; An'desha scrambled to his feet, unassisted, and was already out of the door and running before Karal was standing. By the time Karal reached the two of them, An'desha had supported Firesong over to a couch, and was making distressed sounds over his rapidly-swelling ankle.

Karal blushed, his face and ears hot. 'I'll—ah—get a Healer,' he stammered, leaving An'desha to explain where and how he and Karal had met.

By the time Karal returned with a Healer, he was also full of other news. In general, there was no real physical damage to anything in or around the Palace, and the worst physical hurt seemed to be a couple of bruises, bloody noses, and Firesong's ankle. From all he had been able to make out, some of the weaker magical defenses about the capital had been taken down by the storm and would have to be put up again, but there wasn't much more to worry about. If this was what An'desha's attacks of fear and dread had been about, it was certainly anticlimactic.

Besides the Healer, Karal brought orders for Firesong and An'desha to come to an emergency meeting of the allies and the Council, though, which tended to make him think that there had been effects outside of Haven that were a lot more serious than disorientation and the disruption of weak shields.

He was right.

'Once you are outside the shields that Elspeth, Darkwind, and Firesong erected to protect Haven, there are places all across the country where very weird things have happened,' said Skif. 'I went out for a fast reconnoiter with Cymry, and I saw some of them for myself. There are places where rock turned to liquid for an instant, places where circles of land have been cut out as if someone was making cookies, and circles of land from somewhere else were fitted into the holes! People brought me insects, plants, fish—even animals, all strange, all things I've never seen before in my life! People are scared.'

'Surely this was the work of the Empire,' the Seneschal began, but oddly enough, it was the Lord Marshal who shook his head, and Kerowyn who echoed that headshake.

The Lord Marshal deferred to the Herald Captain with a raised eyebrow and a nod, as if to say, 'After you.'

'It can't have been the Empire's doing, unless it was some new magic they were trying that backfired on them,' Kerowyn told them all, drumming her fingers nervously on the table in front of her. 'I already have short reports from two Mindspeakers behind their lines, and word is that their forces have suffered much more damage than ours have. They depend more than we do on magic, and right now they are working with most of their support systems reduced. By that, I mean they have no means of communicating between groups except by messenger, and no Gates back to the Empire for supplies and reinforcing troops. In a word, gentlemen and ladies,' she said, with a certain satisfaction, 'at the moment, they are well and truly flattened. The only thing that could have hit them worse would have been an army-wide outbreak of dysentery.'