Sun in Glory and Other Tales of Valdemar

duties he had performed, but for Selenay and for her father.

That had only meant he hadn't needed to sit through the candlemarks of arguments, for and against the invitation. Rightly or wrongly, this had been one session that Selenay had decided he especially should not participate in.

No matter: Karchanek had been his own best advocate, once Selenay actually heard him out. Perhaps his two most persuasive points had been that he himself would remain in Selenay's hands as a hostage, and that Alberich himself and one other Herald should go with her. Kero had objected to that, putting herself up as Alberich's substitute. But this was one duty he had no intention of giving over to Kero-well, for one thing, as she assumed his role, he became more expendable and she, less so. For another, there was no one living in Valdemar who could read his fellow countrymen as well as he could.

He stood now beside Karchanek, who was arrayed in one of Gerichen's borrowed robes, beneath a slightly overcast summer sky, in, of all places, Companion's Field beside a hastily erected archway of brickwork. It lacked only two days to Midsummer, the longest day of the year and so the most auspicious for Vkandis, the day appointed for-Well, Alberich didn't quite know what. Solaris hadn't given anyone any indication of just what was going to happen, other than Talia being invested into the ranks of the Sun-priests.

Maybe Solaris herself didn't know. But Midsummer was when it was going to happen, and somehow Karchanek was going to get them there for it. Talia had been here for a candlemark, Rolan beside her, both of them arrayed and packed for traveling. Kantor stood beside Rolan, calm and serene as usual, and in nowise intimidated by the presence of the King Stallion of the Companion herd. Beside him was Dirk's Companion, with Dirk fiddling nervously with girth and stirrups. There was also a crowd of Heralds, Companions, and interested parties surrounding them in a rough circle that was a prudent distance from the innocuous brick arch. No one knew what Karchanek was going to do. They only knew that it would be the first real demonstration of magic within the city of Haven for-centuries.

'-and when the Holy Firecat senses that I am reaching with my signature power toward him.' Karchanek was explaining to Jeri, as he had already explained to Talia, Dirk, Selenay, and everyone else who was involved in making this decision, 'he will open the Gate between us, exactly as if he was burning a tunnel through a mountain to avoid having to climb and descend to reach the other side.'

'And you can't do that alone?' Jeri asked.

He shook his head. 'Only one of Adept power can open a Gate alone, and then, well, it is better that it be done by two or more such Adepts, and then only to a place that has been prepared as I have prepared this archway. One cannot simply make a Gate into nothing, or into a place where one has never been. And the farther one is from the place where one wishes to Gate to, the more power it takes to make the Gate. I cannot do that, no ten Adepts in Karse-if we had ten, and not merely myself and Solaris-could do it. I provide only an anchoring point. It will be the Firecat who creates this Gate.'

'I suppose,' Jeri brooded, 'that's the only reason why you've never Gated in behind our lines with an army.'

Karchanek shrugged. 'Power, lack of familiarity with the place, and that there are very, very few Adepts. The Order as it was distrusted mages, and the more power they had, the less they were trusted. Those who manifested great power and demonstrated an ability to think for themselves often met with unfortunate accidents, or fell victim to the White Demons.

So it was said.'

'And Ancar?' Jeri asked soberly.

'Could learn this, has he those who will teach him,' Karchenek replied grimly. 'Never doubt it. He, as were some of the worst of the Sun-priests of the past, is not limited in power by what he can channel naturally- he can, and has, and will, channel blood-magic, which has no limits other than the number of people that one can kill. Yet another reason why this alliance is so vital. Vital enough that I will remain here, whatever it costs me, hostage to the Son of the Sun's good behavior, although...'

He didn't have to finish that statement; Karchanek looked like a man haunted by his own personal set of demons. In a way, apparently he was. According to Kerowyn, who'd had mages in her Skybolts company that hadn't been able to bear what happened to them when they crossed into Valdemar, the reason why there were no real mages in this land was because they couldn't stand being here. The moment anyone worked real magic here- something happened. Something-a lot of somethings, evidently-swarmed over the mage and gathered around him, night and day. And stared at him.

Now that didn't sound too dreadful to Alberich until he'd had a chance to see what the experience was doing to Karchanek's nerves and thought about it himself. What would it be like to have dozens, perhaps hundreds of people around you all the time, never taking their eyes off you, glaring at you by light and dark, sleeping or waking? Nerve-racking, that was what it was. And when the creatures were invisible to everyone else?

There was no equivalent to the Queen's Own in Solaris' 'court,' but Karchanek was close-lifelong friend and supporter, powerful mage, on whom she depended for able advice.

That he pledged to remain as hostage was probably the o nly reason why, in the end, this plan had been agreed to. 'And what do we do to keep you from spiriting yourself away?'

Selenay had asked sharply when he first made the proposition himself.

He had shrugged. 'Whatever you please. Bind me, blindfold me, keep in me a darkened room, drug me if no other solution presents itself. Whatever makes you certain of me.'

Selenay had taken him at his word. There was a small cup of some drug or other waiting in a page's hands for the moment when the Gate came down again. Karchanek would be drugged until the morning of the ceremony, then watched like a hawk until the moment when the Firecat would call him and use him reopen the Gate to Valdemar, this time in the full presence of every important person in Karse at the High Temple itself, and send Talia and her escort home. He didn't seem at all unhappy about that-

'-the truth?' he said to Jeri, when she asked him about that herself. 'I will welcome it.

To sleep, oblivious to all the vrondi- eyes upon me! I could ask no greater boon, at this moment. They do not just watch, you know. They talk, at me sometimes, but mostly among themselves. It is not just the eyes upon me, it is the chatter, the droning babble that never stills and never ends, that I cannot understand.' He shuddered, and Alberich saw with an easing of his worries that a faint expression of sympathy flitted over Selenay's face.

Sympathy-for a Karsite other than Alberich. A good omen, but one he didn't have time to contemplate. Already Karchanek approached the brickwork archway, and he had warned Alberich that not even a Firecat could maintain a Gate at this distance for too long. They would barely have time to get through it.

As a lowly Captain of the Border Guard, he had never actually seen any priestly magic being performed, other than the simple act of kindling fire on Vkandis' altar; he'd only heard the howls of the spectral creatures conjured to harry 'witches and evildoers' through the night. He couldn't bear to watch it now. Perhaps one day, when he'd had a chance to become accustomed to the idea of magic being used for anything other than harm, but not now. Not when his nerves were singing with the need to act, and he feared that if he watched Karchanek, a man he would like to think of as a friend one day, he might see the Priest-Mage calling a demon...

So he busied himself with Kantor's tack, and when the signal came, he mounted in a rush, and drove through the Gate with his eyes closed, hard on Rolan's heels.

There was a long, long moment then of terrible cold, then bone-shaking nausea, and the horrible sensation that he was falling through a starless, endless, bottomless night. It seemed to last forever, but Kantor's steady presence in his mind held him, as it had held him during the long, slow agony of healing from his terrible burns, when Kantor had rescued him and brought him here, to safety and a new life

Then he was not here, anymore, but there-in Karse.

Sun blazed down upon him and the others, a sun fierce and kind at the same time.

They stood, their Companions' bridle bells chiming softly as they fidgeted, in the middle of a bone-white courtyard surrounded on all four sides by enclosing walls. Before them waited a cat, and a woman.

The cat was the size of a large dog, with a brick-red mask, ears, paws, and tail shading to a handsome