Storm Warning

Which makes it more likely to be the right one.

'It is what the shaman called 'The Warrior Within.' The voice inside us that tells us what we must know,' An'desha said slowly. 'The source of all honor, faith, and prosperity under the Goddess is that voice, if we listen with wisdom, they say.'

Ulrich studied his face as he sat there with all those powerful thoughts passing through his mind; at last the priest nodded, as if he was satisfied with what he read there. He raised an eyebrow at Karal.

'I have laid the foundation,' he said to his protege. 'I think you can complete the work. Simply keep your mind as open as it has become, and I do not think you will misstep.'

He turned back to An'desha. 'The bulk of your solutions lie within you, I do think,' Ulrich told him. 'Karal will help you, but on the whole, you will be doing the real work to find them. I will do what I can, but there is nothing that I see in you now that requires my further help.'

Which meant—what? That he had needed Ulrich's help until this moment?

'I would be the last person to assert that things cannot change, however,' Ulrich continued. 'If they do, I would be distressed if you did not come to me. Meanwhile, you may trust Karal. He is sensible, he has learned good judgment, he is not afraid of the strange or the powerful, and he has, most of all, a good heart.'

Then, while Karal was still blushing a brilliant sunset-crimson, Ulrich got up and left the two of them alone again.

With Ulrich's encouragement, Karal spent as much of his free time as possible with An'desha. As the days passed, Karal became more and more convinced that Ulrich was right; the key to everything An'desha feared lay in those buried memories. Not only was there something in those recollections that was triggering An'desha's prescient episodes and his nightmares, but there were also things about An'desha himself that needed to be dealt with.

So Karal continued to work on the 'foundation' that Ulrich had established; building An'desha's confidence, convincing him that he had passions and would make purely human mistakes, but that as long as he remembered to keep his powers under a tight rein, the mistakes he made would teach him how not to make other mistakes.

'Compassion and honor,' he said, over and over again. 'Those are what is important. So long as you have both, and act with both, you cannot make any mistake that will bring lasting harm.'

'No?' An'desha replied with skepticism—a healthy sign, that he should respond with anything other than blind agreement. That meant he was thinking for himself. 'But—'

'But good intentions count for something, else I'd have been condemned to Vkandis' coldest Hell long ago!' He grinned and hugged An'desha's shoulders. 'If you have compassion and honor, and you made a mistake that harmed someone, must you not, out of compassion and honor, see that the mistake is being made and try to stop it?'

'Well, yes, I suppose,' An'desha replied slowly.

'And having seen the effects of such a mistake, must you not also try to reverse them?' he continued, with purest logic. 'Don't you see? Compassion and honor require that you not make excuses, nor allow yourself to say, 'nothing can be done.' So even if you make a mistake, you must fix it. You'll want to.'

Perhaps because Karal had no great powers of his own, and yet was (relatively) fearless in the face of great powers, An'desha came to trust him, even as Ulrich claimed he would. And although An'desha was not told, Ulrich's interest went far beyond the one meeting. The priest questioned his protege carefully every night, and asked Karal what his continuing plans were. He very seldom suggested any other course—Karal had the feeling that Ulrich was letting him make his own mistakes and rectify them as well—but it gave Karal a feeling of increased confidence to know that his mentor was keeping track of all this, though the progress came by infinitesimal increments.

But there was some measurable progress. An'desha did start looking at some of the older memories. He was already past the life of a strange creature that had called himself simply 'Leareth' (which meant 'Darkness' in the Hawkbrother tongue), a time that seemed to be several centuries ago.

And Firesong was a great deal happier with him, at least according to An'desha. An'desha carried some of his confidence back into his lessons with the Adept, and was making more and steadier progress toward using those powers he carried, instead of wishing them gone.

Success gave An'desha further courage to look farther and deeper into those dark memories, and to face what lay there.

And, just as important, An'desha was able to look at the terrible things in those memories and acknowledge, without flinching, that the hateful or jealous things he felt (and did not act on) could be considered a faint, far shadow of the dreadful things that the one who had been Falconsbane had done.