Storm Warning

'Is this getting dangerous?' Karal asked in a whisper, as Firesong soberly lit mage-lights and returned to his seat beside An'desha's pallet.

'No—or not yet, anyway,' the Adept replied, although he sounded uncertain to Karal. 'I have been in trances longer; for two or three days, even.'

But those were not trances in which you pursued the memories of power-hungry sadists, Karal added, but only to himself. Still, nothing had gone overtly wrong yet. There was no point in conjuring trouble.

He wished that Altra was here, though. The Firecat had waited just long enough to be sure that he had survived An'desha's anger, then had vanished without an explanation. He could have used Altra's view on this; if Solaris' behavior was anything to go by, a former Son of the Sun should be much more familiar with trances and their effects than he was.

A hint of movement riveted his attention back on An'desha. Had his eyelids moved? If the lights had been candles, he would have put it down to the flickering shadows, but mage-lights were as steady as sunlight. Yes! There it was again, the barest flutter of eyelids as the sleeper slowly, gently awakened.

A moment later, and An'desha opened his eyes and blinked in temporary confusion—Firesong poured the tea that had been steeping all this while, and helped him to sit up, then offered him the cup. An'desha took it, his hands shaking only slightly, and drank it down in a single swallow.

'How late is it?' he asked, as he gave the cup back to Karal, who poured more tea for him.

'Evening. Not quite midnight,' Firesong told him.

An'desha nodded. Karal watched him covertly, and was relieved to see nothing in his expression or manner that was not entirely in keeping with the An'desha that he knew. 'I discovered that we have been laboring under a misconception,' he said, finally. 'Before Ma'ar died, there was a time when he had to deal with the kind of situation we have now, although the initial destruction was of a single Gate and the spells of the area around it, and nowhere near so cataclysmic as what came later.'

Firesong nodded with excitement in his eyes, and Karal leaned forward. 'So what did he do?'

An'desha sipped his tea before replying. 'It isn't so much what he did, as what his enemy did,' he said. 'He wasn't concerned with the effect of the waves outside his domain, so he simply built the sort of shield that I think we've been assuming we'd need all along.' An'desha shook his head. 'That would be a dreadful mistake,' he continued. 'A shield wall alone would simply reflect the waves again, and the reflected waves have the potential for causing more harm than the original waves!'

Karal sat back for a moment, and pictured the physical model that the engineers had constructed, a large basin filled with water, the bottom covered with a contour map of Valdemar and most of the surrounding area. He thought about the experiments that Master Levy had been making, dropping large stones into the basin over 'Evendim' and 'Dhorisha Plains' and watching the wave-patterns, seeing how those patterns interacted.

And when the waves reached the edge of the basin, the experiment was over, because they reflected from the edge and made new and different patterns that had nothing to do with the ones he was studying.

'I see it,' he replied, 'but—'

'But it was what Ma'ar's enemy did that was interesting—and more importantly, appropriate,' An'desha interrupted. 'Instead of making a flat shieldwall he literally created a breakwater, exactly what Master Norten has been talking about; something that not only stops the waves, but absorbs their force. Ma'ar studied it and knew how to recreate it, but he considered it a waste of his time and resources.' He paused. 'Because he knew how to recreate this, so do I. What's more, I also know how to recreate his 'shieldwall.' If we combined both—we can absorb the waves coming at us, and we can reflect the rest back at the Empire!'

Firesong sucked in his breath, and Karal sat back on his heels.

'I don't know if we ought to do that,' Karal said at last, troubled by the implications. 'Does the Empire deserve that?'

Firesong shot him an incredulous look. 'You say that after what they've done to you?' he exclaimed.

But Karal shook his head. 'They didn't do anything. There are two, perhaps three people who are responsible; Celandine, who got what he deserved, this Grand Duke Tremane, whoever he is, and possibly the Emperor. They, the whole of the Empire, is very large, and composed mostly of people who aren't even aware of the existence of Karse.' He sighed. 'Firesong, don't make the mistake that we of Karse did for so long with Valdemar. Don't make the Empire into a vast conspiracy of faceless enemies who are all personally responsible for what the leaders do and do not do. There are thousands of perfectly innocent people in the Empire, who do not deserve to have their chickens turns into child-eating monsters just because a few ruthless people caused us harm.'

Firesong shrugged, but Karal could tell by the troubled look in his eyes that he had