Storm Warning

Karal nodded, and smiled a little. This was the part of the tale he really enjoyed. 'That was what gave her the office, in fact. It was a miracle—a real one, and no fakery. I was there, I saw it myself. For that matter, so was Ulrich, and he is certainly an expert at spotting something that was not a God-produced miracle. I do not believe that there is any kind of fakery, either slight-of-hand and illusion, or magic masquerading as a miracle, that he cannot detect.'

It had been a very strange day to begin with; the day of the Fire Kindling Ceremony at Midwinter, when all the fires of Karse were relit from the ones ignited on the altars of Vkandis. It should have been bitter cold—

'It was the strangest Midwinter Day I have ever seen,' he said slowly. 'Hot—terribly hot and dry. Hot enough that the Priests had all taken out their summer robes for the Fire Kindling Ceremony. There was not a single cloud in the sky above the city, but outside the city the sky was covered with dull gray clouds, from horizon to horizon. Ulrich and I were at the front of the Processional; Solaris was no more than three people away from Ulrich.' He closed his eyes for a moment, picturing it, and chose his words carefully, trying to set the scene for his listener. 'We Priests and novices surrounded the High Altar in a semicircle; the beam of sunlight—called the Lance of Hope— shining through the Eye in the ceiling above us slowly moved toward the pile of fragrant woods and incense on the Altar. The golden statue of Vkandis-In-Glory, wearing the Crown of Prophecy, shone like the sun itself behind the Altar, and Lastem—the False Son—stood beside it, ready to kindle the flames by magic if the sunlight didn't do the trick promptly enough.'

Rubrik nodded. 'I take it that this was a fairly common practice?'

Karal snorted with disgust. 'I never once saw the False Son bring forth a single true miracle. For that matter, he was so feeble in magic that the most he could do was to kindle flame in very dry, oily tinder. Well, that day, he never got the chance for his deceptions.'

He turned toward Rubrik, and lowered his voice like a true storyteller. 'Imagine it for yourself—the crowd of worshipers filling the temple, the golden statue of Vkandis shining behind the Altar and the False Son standing beside it like a fat, black spider. The Processional ended just as the beam of sunlight crept up to the Altar platform; Solaris was no more than five paces away, watching, not the False Son, but the beam of light, her face mirroring her ecstasy.'

Was that a little too florid? No, I don't think so.

'Most of the important Priests only looked bored, though, on what should be an important day for them, the Holiest of all of Vkandis' Holy Days. They couldn't wait to get back to the Cloister and the feast that waited there for them.' Ulrich and a great many of the low-ranked Priests avoided the feast when they could. It was little more than an occasion for those in favor with the Son of the Sun to lord it over those who were not. Hardly Ulrich's choice of a way to spend a Holy Day. He preferred to spend his rare free time reading.

'The beam of sunlight slowly moved onto the Altar itself, while the Children's Choir sang. I saw the False Son's hands moving as he prepared to trigger the fire-starting spell if the wood didn't catch. Then, just before the beam touched the kindling in the middle of the Altar—'

As if he had triggered it himself, a tremendous bolt of lightning lanced down right beside the inn, and as they both jumped and Karal squeaked, the thunder deafened them and everyone else inside the inn.

He sat there for a moment, waiting for his ears to clear, and very grateful that he had not been looking out the window at that moment. If he had, he'd have been blinded!

Rubrik laughed shakily. 'Next time, tell me when you are going to produce a surprise to liven up your tale!'

'I'm not responsible for that one!' Karal retorted, with a shaky chuckle of his own. 'Perhaps you ought to ask Vkandis if He has widened His lands to include Valdemar! Because that was precisely what happened in the Temple—a bolt of lightning shot down through the opening in the Temple's roof, out of the cloudless sky, and completely evaporated the False Son of the Sun.'

Rubrik stared at him skeptically, as if he suspected that this was just more tale-telling.

But Karal shook his head emphatically. 'I promise you, I was there, and so was Ulrich. He'll corroborate what I've said. There was literally nothing left but the man's smoking vestments and boots, too—I've never seen anything like it, and neither had anyone else. But that wasn't the end of the miracle, it was only the beginning!'

'What next?' Rubrik asked, his tone conveying that even if he was not quite convinced, he was certain that Karal was telling the truth as he saw it.

'Next, was that when we could see again, every stone column in the Temple had been turned upside down, and since they all had carvings on them, it was pretty obvious that they'd been inverted. We didn't know it at the time, but we found out later that every cloud vanished from over the whole of Karse, and the First Fires on every Altar blazed up and burned for a full week without any additional fuel.' He left out the other, smaller miracles— about the children waiting to be burned who had vanished from the hands of the Black-robes, only to be discovered long afterward, hidden in the homes of their families. He eliminated the story of the Priest's Staffs—how some of the staffs turned brittle and disintegrated at a touch, while others put out green branches covered with flowers.

And the Staffs that turned to dust were the ones that belonged to the False Son's favorites and cronies, and those Black-robes who had truly enjoyed the demon-summoning and the burnings.... He himself had held Ulrich's Staff, which had so many tiny red flowers covering the branches at the top that the wood