Storm Rising

had impressed the Prince-Consort. Jarim looked startled; his eyes widened with shock. 'I thought that it would last longer than that,' he objected. 'You only just put it up!'

Firesong shrugged. 'The breakwater loses a bit more of itself with every storm, and the storms are coming more and more frequently. There is a mathematical progression to them. We told you that. The erosion is accelerating. Pity, but we knew when we set it up that all we were doing was buying time, and we tried to make that as clear as possible to all of you.'

Firesong can say that, and say it insolently, and get away with it. Jarim respects him; I think he might even be a little afraid of him. Today Firesong was wearing stark and unornamented black, a costume that accentuated both the gold of his Tayledras skin and the vivid silver-blue of his eyes—which only served to remind Jarim that the Hawkbrothers and the Shin'a'in were related—and the silver of his hair, the reminder of the power he wielded. Firesong was very good at choosing the best costume for the purpose. Today he was obviously in the mood for intimidation. It was a talent Karal wished he had.

Prince Daren stepped forward at that point, and took over the discussion. 'Ladies and gentlemen, would you all take your seats? Firesong, would you repeat what you have been saying to everyone? This is important, very important, and I want to make sure there are no misunderstandings.'

Daren went to his own seat and sat down, effectively beginning the meeting.

There was some shuffling about as people found their accustomed chairs, and Firesong not only stood up, he stood in the hollow center of the table where the gryphon Treyvan was, with one hand on the gryphon's shoulder. The gryphon twitched an ear-tuft a bit.

'Some of you were part of our earlier Council when we first learned how we could, temporarily, protect the Alliance lands and Iftel from the battering we were taking from the mage-storms,' he said gravely. 'This we did, and as you are all aware, it was successful. But it was still a temporary solution. Like a shoreline breakwater from which this protection takes its name, it absorbs the force of the waves of the mage-storm, but at a cost to itself. It is eroded, a little more with every battering that it takes. It will come down, collapsing under the repeated battering that it is subject to. Just because you are not feeling the effects of the mage-storms, that does not mean they are not continuing to move in on us. Even if you, yourselves, do not feel the force of one of these storms against your body, somebody out there will. They bring pain and misery and destruction. They are still coming at us, and the frequency and force are increasing as time goes on. We can measure this force, and we are doing so. I estimate that the breakwater will collapse in about four months' time, Darkwind gives it a slightly longer six months. Once again, all that we did was to buy our Alliance time to concoct another solution—one that could involve magic, since our magic is no longer being disrupted by the storms. We told you this was temporary at the time we did it, and we meant it.'

That was just about the longest speech Firesong had ever made, and his words were given added impetus when the gryphon nodded with every salient point.

'I have ssseen the effectsss frrrom the airrr, frrriends. They leave the earrrth rrriven in placesss. We sshould be concentrating on the brrreakwaterrr'sss replacement,' the gryphon added. 'And, frrrankly, on what we can do if we cannot find a replacssement in time. If you thought thingsss werrre bad beforrre—'

He left the sentence unfinished, hanging in the air like the threat that it was.

Although Karal remembered distinctly that this point was made before anyone left Haven to set up the breakwater the first place, the fact that it was not the permanent solution still seemed to come as a complete surprise to many of the officials and envoys, Jarim among them.

'Well, why didn't you put a permanent solution in place?' snapped the head of the dairy farmers.

Firesong leveled a look at the man that should have melted him where he stood. 'Oh, and you wanted us to wait to find one?' he asked, then continued. 'This phenomenon was as new to us as it was to you; completely unprecedented, and we still don't fully understand it. As I recall, the mage-storms created a few killer cows before we put a halt to them,' he said icily. 'As it happens, we did the best we could at the time, to save the rest of you from as many of the effects as we could while we tried to put together something better. Would you rather we had let the storms rage across the landscape, turning more cattle into monsters?'

Perhaps the man had seen one of those 'killer cows,' for he paled and looked shamefaced. 'Well, no—but —'

Someone else interrupted with another shouted accusation, which Firesong met with equally devastating wit and logic. Accusations and counter accusations flew for a moment, until it was finally driven home to even the most hardheaded at the table that the mages and artificers had not somehow 'cheated' them—that they had done what they could at the time. 'Like a barricade of sandbags holding back floodwaters,' was Elspeth's analogy.

The uproar settled into silence, and it was Jarim who was bold enough to break it.

'Well, if this is only temporary, then what are we going to do?' he asked testily. 'Have you people made any progress at all?'

What does he want us to say? They've already told him everything they know!

Darkwind sighed, and Elspeth patted his shoulder. 'Well, candidly, not much,' he said wearily. 'We don't have enough facts yet—'