Storm Warning

The trio passed the silent Guards, went through the open gate, and for the first time in his life, Karal entered a foreign land.

Karal had expected to feel—something—once he was across the border and in a new land. Some kind of difference in the air, or in himself. He'd expected that this alien place would look different from Karse somehow, that the grass and trees would be some odd color, that the people would be vastly different. There was no reason to have expected anything of the sort, of course—

—but emotions don't respond well to logic, I suppose.

As they rode northward all the rest of the day, there was literally no way of telling that they were not in Karse. The hills were virtually identical to the ones they had just traversed; covered with the same trees, the same grass. The scents in the air were the same; sun-warmed dust, the occasional perfume of briar-roses blooming beside the road.

The few people that they encountered were not really all that different either, except that it was obvious they were not Karsite. Their clothing was different; plain in the extreme, severely styled, in muted grays, browns, and tans. Mud-colors, really; no Karsite would ever wear such nothing-colors unless he were too abysmally poor to afford anything else, or unless he intended to do some truly filthy task and didn't want his proper clothing ruined. Even for work in the fields most Karsites wore good, strong saffrons and indigos—but not these folk.

They passed a number of folk cutting hay, one herding swine and another with a flock of geese, a few weeding fields of cabbages or other vegetables. The animals turned to watch the trio pass; the people themselves blatantly ignored the travelers, turning away from the road, in fact, in stiff and disapproving attitudes that bordered on rudeness. 'Holderkin,' Rubrik said, after the third or fourth time that someone deliberately turned his face from them. The escort sighed and shook his head. 'I'm sorry about this. They don't like those of us who represent the Queen, much—hardly more than they like you Karsites. I do believe that if there was any way to manage it, they'd create their own little country here, build a high wall around it, and shut Valdemar and Karse outside forever and aye.'

Ulrich laughed at that, and his eyes crinkled up at the corners with sympathetic good humor. 'In that case, sir, I think my land well rid of them. I am marginally familiar with them, in a purely historical sense. They seem to have made themselves something of a thorn in your side.'

Rubrik shrugged ruefully and rubbed the side of his nose. 'I can't say that no good has come from them—the Queen's Own, Lady Talia, is of Holderkin breeding. But aside from that, they are a damned unpleasant people, and I've had occasion more than once to wish them somewhere far, far away.'

Karal kept silent through this exchange, watching their escort, and trying to deduce why the man rode so stiffly. How was it that someone who seemed to be such a clumsy rider had such a fine mount? How was it that the mount was so used to the rider that the horse itself actually accommodated the rider?

Finally, as Rubrik turned to point out a wedge of geese flying overhead, pursued by a goshawk, the answer to all those questions came to him.

Rubrik's right arm moved stiffly; he could not seem to raise it above his shoulder. There was a 'dead' quality to the right side of his face. And although his right knee stuck out woodenly, his left leg showed the perfect form of an experienced rider.

Rubrik was injured somehow—or he'd had some kind of brainstorm. He was partially paralyzed; the stiffness of his right side and the little tic in the corner of his right eye were the last clues that Karal needed.

Rubrik would have to have such a mount, one trained to compensate for his weakness, if he was to be at all mobile. Now Karal's admiration for the stunning horse increased a hundredfold, for a horse so trained must be as intelligent as one of the legendary Shin'a'in beasts.

His admiration turned to more surprise when he realized that Rubrik's horse was not a gelding as he had assumed, but a full stallion. A full stallion—one which showed no interest in Honeybee who, although a mule, was still a mare? What kind of training could ever give a horse that kind of self-control?

He would have asked just that question if Ulrich had not engaged their escort's attention completely, asking about some complex situation at the Valdemaran Court. A good half of the names Ulrich bandied about so casually completely eluded his secretary, although Karal recognized most of the rest from all the correspondence he had handled over the past few weeks.

I guess there was a lot more going on in those private conferences than Ulrich led me to believe. Not that that should surprise him!

He suppressed his own curiosity and simply listened to the two men talk, for this, too, was part of his job—to learn as much as he could by listening.

Eventually, either Ulrich tired of asking questions, or the envoy decided that he wanted to think about what he had learned before he asked anything more. By this time, the last of the farmlands were behind them; if anyone used the hills on either side of the road for anything, it was probably to harvest timber and for grazing. Silence fell on the party, broken only by the sounds of wildlife out in the forested hills, and by the sound of the hooves of their mounts.

That was when Karal noticed something else. While Trenor and Honeybee had perfectly normal, dull, clopping