Storm Warning

happened that way to him when he'd been taken by the Priests, after all.

I only hope none of her students have had half so exciting a life as An'desha. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

He brought the notes to Master Henlin, who was in the Masters' Room at the rear of the tavern, presiding over a sea of paper, hundreds of sheets of it, covered with figures and diagrams. Then, relieved of his burden, he hurried back out to see if An'desha was still holding up well under the scrutiny of so many strangers.

He was—in fact, he was deep in a discussion of where magic energy came from.

'—so some mage-schools have built up reserves, like a cistern or reservoir, and that is what their Master mages can tap into when they need it,' he was saying. 'It all comes from the same source, though—the energy of life that is all around us. All of us living creatures shed it as we breathe and move.'

'And what about the Adepts you mentioned?' Natoli asked. 'Do they use something special? Or are there other reserves only they can use?'

'There are,' the young Adept replied, nodding. 'But they are not the reserves that have been built up by other mages. Rather, they are the reserves that exist where two or more natural lines of force meet. These are called 'nodes,' and they are so powerful that only an Adept can control the energy that pools in them. Anyone else trying would either be unable to touch the power, or would be engulfed by it and devoured. Charred.'

One of the boys shivered. 'Not a pleasant prospect.'

'No,' An'desha replied soberly. 'It is not. But you see, now, that this all does respond to natural laws. The power comes from somewhere, and goes elsewhere, like water flowing to the sea. Where it goes eventually, is to a place we call the Nether Planes, where everything is made of chaos and energy. And I suspect that it comes back into our World Plane from there, through the medium of living things.'

'Time to speculate about that when we have the leisure,' Master Levy interjected, spreading a map out on the table in front of An'desha. 'We've been over every thumblength of ground a half day's ride from Haven, and this is what we've found so far. Transplanted areas are in green, blasted areas are in red, transformed areas are in yellow.'

An'desha bent over the map to study it; Karal whispered to Natoli.

'Transformed areas?' he asked. 'What are those?'

'Places where whatever was there was changed,' she whispered back. 'Everything in them is the same as it was, but inside those circles, it's another season. We're in late summer right now; there, it's fall, winter, or even spring. Plants that should be in fruit are blooming, or dormant, insects are dead or in cocoons or eggs, and birds or animals are in winter or courting colors.'

He blinked at her in surprise; she only grimaced. 'Don't ask me, I have no notion what could have caused something like that,' she told him.

He turned his attention back to the map, thankful that there were fewer red dots than green or yellow. There definitely was a pattern there—the dots were spaced out at equal intervals, and if you followed a line of them, they would sequence as three greens, a red, and three greens and a yellow. But there didn't seem to be a center to the pattern, or a point of origin.

'I wonder—' An'desha began, then stopped.

'Go ahead,' Master Tarn urged. 'You know magic, and we don't. If you can suggest some kind of meaning or interpretation, I for one would be happy to hear it.'

'Well—I wonder if what has happened is that with the transformed and blasted places, there was too much energy brought to bear, and that is why the damage?' Then he shrugged. 'I am grasping at straws.'

'That's no more than we've been doing,' Master Levy confessed to him. 'Let's follow that theory for a moment.'

Karal couldn't understand more than half of what either of them said, but they seemed to understand each other, and that was the important part. Since An'desha didn't seem nearly as shy of these people as he had when he'd first walked into the room, and since Natoli was immersed in the discussion and ignoring everything else, Karal finally left them and assigned himself to one of the desks where others his age were making copies of the same chart that Master Tarn had unrolled in front of An'desha.

I can make a copy of this to take back with me; that will save these others from having to make a spare. He helped himself to pens, ink, and paper, and when he had finished that task, he began making copies of his own notes for the other Masters, just as the rest were doing.

When his tired eyes threatened to unfocus completely, he finished one last page, and rolled up his map and the pages of descriptions of the 'magic circles,' and went to find An'desha.