Storm Warning

'I do,' Master Levy replied, nodding at Darkwind as if the mage was a particularly good student. 'And I also mean that they are traveling in the opposite direction; instead of radiating out from the Plains and Lake Evendim, they are converging on the Plains and Lake Evendim. Which means that all their force, in the end, will be concentrated in those two spots.'

'Oh.' Elspeth held her knuckles to her mouth in stunned silence.

'And as the waves increase in strength, the areas of disturbance will no longer be confined to the points of intersection, but will be as wide as—' Master Levy paused for a moment, '—at a guess, I would say roughly a third of the wave's period. Once again, that could be an area the size of a country, or larger.'

Firesong sat down slowly. 'You have convinced me, mathematician,' he said, his face blank. 'Your proofs are too good. And you have told me that my people are doomed, mine and the Shin'a'in. They lie directly in the area that will be affected the worst. No shields can ever withstand the force of the kind that is mounting against them.'

'Feh!' snorted Master Norten into the heavy pause that followed. He was a short, squat fellow who had remained silent during all of this. His exclamation pierced the ponderous silence, making all of them start.

'What?' Elspeth faltered.

'I said, begging your pardon, Feh. No one is doomed, young man.' Master Norten favored Firesong with a sharp glare, as if he had caught Firesong being impossibly dense. 'We have enough information to predict the period of the next waves! We have enough information to know what the strength will be, and where the intersection points are! Right now, the danger is only at the intersection points; we can keep people and animals out of them; we can destroy the plants inside them. But haven't you been paying attention? We have a temporary solution, enough to buy us time to find a real solution!'

'You have?' Elspeth gasped.

'We have?' Master Levy gaped.

Master Norten took the cane with which he had been supporting his bulk and rapped Master Levy with it. 'Of course we have, you dolt! All you ever see are your damned mathematical models! Think, man! You're the one who pointed out that these spurts of magic are acting in a way we recognize! Can't you understand that these—these magic-waves—are acting exactly like waves of water? And can't we protect harbors and anchorages from real waves with breakwaters? So why can't these mages come up with magical breakwaters to protect important places, places like cities and those nodes of theirs and all?' He glared at all of them, as if he could not believe they had not seen what to him was so obvious. 'Hell and damnation! Why can't they just build a magical breakwater to protect every country in the Alliance?'

'This is why I am a mathematician and not an engineer,' Master Levy replied, with chagrin. Master Norton snorted again, and looked very pleased with himself.

'I—I suppose it ought to be possible,' murmured Darkwind, his brows knotted as he thought.

'Well, then, you ought to damn well do it, boy!' Master Norten retorted. 'We can surely give you the dates and times and interference points. We can calculate the strength and period if you help us establish scales. With all that, I don't see why you can't do the rest, instead of sitting on your behinds, whining about being 'doomed'!'

'But magic doesn't work that way,' Firesong whispered—except that it sounded more like a plea than a statement of fact.

'I'm sorry, Firesong,' Karal replied, not at all sorry to see Firesong at last convinced that he was not the greatest expert in all things. 'It does.' He handed Firesong a set of all of the tables for the last two waves, his own copies that he had been keeping with him. In the face of all the neat rows of dispassionate, logical figures and formulas, finally even Firesong had to concede defeat. 'All right,' the Healing Adept said at last. 'It does. And I promise that I will learn how to use all of this. How long do we have before the real mage-storm breaks?'

'We haven't calculated it yet,' Master Levy responded instantly. 'We only now have enough information to predict how much stronger the next waves will be from the ones preceding them. It would help if we had an idea how strong the original waves were, and what their period was.'

'Farrr enough that the Kaled'a'in werrre engulfed in the rrresultsss of the Cataclysssm, dessspite the grrreat distancsse they had gone frrrom Urrrtho'sss Towerrr,' Treyvan rumbled. 'Howeverrr—we alssso trrraveled to a point outssside that, beforrre we finally found a placsse wherrre the land wasss clean. Therrre we ssstopped. Perrrhaps we can give you an essstimate.'

'An estimate will do,' Master Levy told the gryphon. He had started when Treyvan first spoke, but he seemed to have accepted the fact that the gryphons could speak with intelligence.

'I can send a mage-message,' Firesong volunteered instantly. 'And—wasn't there something in that history Rris recited about how long the original—ah, I suppose we could call them 'aftershocks'—lasted?'