Storm Warning

'That isn't all, my lord Duke.' The thin, reedy voice came from the oldest mage with Tremane's entourage, his own mentor, Sejanes. The old man might look as if he was a senile old stick, but his mind was just as sharp as it had been decades ago. 'This mage-storm has affected the material world as well as the world of magic. Listen —'

He picked up the pile of papers on the table before him, with hands that were as steady as a surgeon's. 'These are the reports I have from messengers I sent out on horses to the other mages in the army. The tidings they returned with were not reassuring. From Halloway: 'There are places where rocks melted into puddles and resolidified in a heartbeat, sometimes trapping things in the newly-solid rock.' From Gerrolt: 'Strange and entirely new insects and even higher forms of life have appeared around the camp. I cannot say whether they were created on the instant, or come from elsewhere in the world.' From Margan: 'Roughly circular pieces of land two and three cubits in diameter appear to have been instantly transplanted from far and distant places. There are circles of desert, of forest, of swamp—even a bit of lake bottom, complete with mud, water-weeds, and gasping and dying fish.'' He waved the papers. 'There are more such reports, from all up and down the lines, and from behind them as well. You are well beyond my needing to prompt you, Tremane, but this cannot have been an act of nature!'

'And it isn't likely that it is residue from King Ancar's reckless meddling, either,' Tremane agreed.

'I cannot see how,' Sejanes replied, dropping the papers again. 'Ancar was not capable of magic on this scale. There is no mage capable of magic on this scale. I can only assume that it must have been caused by many mages, working together. Perhaps that would account for the variety and disparity of its effects.'

Tremane racked his memory for any accounts of anything like this 'mage-storm,' and came up with nothing. Oh, there were mage-storms of course, but they all had purely physical effects, and were caused by too much unshielded use of magical energies. Those storms were real storms, weather systems, very powerful ones. This was not like any mage-storm he had ever seen, and yet the term was an apt one. It had struck like a storm, or a squall line; it had passed overhead, done its damage, and passed on.

And there was only one place this storm could have come from.

'There is only one place this storm could have originated from,' Sejanes said, echoing his own thoughts. 'Despite the fact that it began east of us—well, any fool knows that the world is a ball! What better way to surprise us than by sending out an attack to circle the world and strike from behind?'

'You're saying that Valdemar sent this against us,' Tremane replied slowly.

Sejanes shrugged. 'Who else? Who else has access to strange allies from lands we never even heard of? Who else uses magics we don't understand? Who else has reason to attack us from behind?'

'Who else indeed,' Tremane echoed. 'They lose nothing by making life miserable for the Empire and the Imperial allies, and they could have warned their friends to erect special shields. Except that—according to all of you, Valdemar has the absolute minimum in the way of magic!'

He cast an accusatory glance around the table. Most of the mages cringed and averted their eyes, but Sejanes met him look for look.

'We still don't know what those horses are,' Sejanes pointed out acidly. 'And we don't recognize their magics. So how could we tell what they had and didn't have? We made our best guess based on the fact that they simply do not use magic in their everyday lives. There are no mage-lights or mage-fires—they have only candles, lanterns and torches, and physical fires. There are no Constructors; they build contrivances with no magic at all to haul water, grind grain. There are no Replicators; all documents are copied by hand, or printed with much labor. Messages are sent by those crude mirror-towers, or by human messenger. So what are we to think? That they have no magic, of course.'

'But if they have no magic in daily use,' Tremane pointed out, thinking out loud, 'then they will not suffer from this attack as we have.'

Sejanes nodded, his head bobbing on his thin neck like a toy on a spring. 'Precisely. As if they used this kind of attack all the time. As if they planned for this kind of attack to be used against them.'

It made sense. It more than made sense. If you expected someone to hurl fire at you, you built your fort of stone. If you expected catapults, you built the walls thickly. If you expected to be deluged with mage-caused thunderstorms, you built truly good drainage.

And if you expected to be attacked by something that twisted and ruined your spells, you didn't use any. Unless, of course, it was the spell intended to twist and ruin all other spells.

'But where did this come from?' he asked, thinking aloud again.

Sejanes shrugged, and the rest of the mages only shook their heads. 'It passed roughly east to west, and at a guess I would say that if it came from Valdemar as we think, it truly did circle the whole world to get here. That is logical, and in line with the notion that it originated in Valdemar. Frankly, if I had such an attack, I would use it that way, because it would be at its weakest when it finally got back to me. It was certainly strong enough to wreak havoc for us when it reached us!'

That made sense, too. 'You're saying you can't find a point of origin, though,' he persisted. 'If you could, we