Changes

Ah, it’s you again.

Aye. Need to know something.

How to find those irritations.

That caught his attention. Why would the stone think of them as irritations?

Because they are. They are in the Web, not of the Web, and they cannot be dislodged.

An image passed through his mind of a useless bit of flotsam in a spiderweb. Every time the wind blew, it vibrated the web, irritating the spider. But the spider could not get it out, it was too big for her strength, and she could not cut it free without destroying her creation.

He passed the image to Gennie, who passed it in turn to Sedric.

That’s interesting, but it doesn’t help me find them in the real world.

What do you really want?

I need to find them, he repeated after a moment.

Need. Not want.

Dammit. The thing was being all obtuse and mystical again. Need, want, weren’t they the same thing?

No.

He reined in his temper, as he felt his control and his ability to communicate with the thing eroding.

Need and want are sometimes incompatible.

Now he groaned inwardly, felt exasperation, felt despair, and again felt his connection with the stone slipping.

He clawed his way back and felt it regarding him dispassionately.

You are out of balance.

I’m... those bastards have someone I—

Trivial, in the long run.

Now anger filled him, and the stone started to thrust him away, until he throttled it down.

You are out of balance.

He went through his relaxation exercises again, keeping the front of his mind calm while the back of his mind raced, trying to figure out how to pry want he needed out of this thing. Obviously you couldn’t force it. It would just kick you out if you tried. And you couldn’t trick it—it knew all the tricks. You had to ask the right question—exactly the right question.

Every time he felt emotion, it tried to shake him out, too. What had it said?

I am balance, it repeated, in answer to his question.

All right, take that at face value. That this stone was a balance point. And Dallen had said that it was at the center of the Web of Heralds and Companions. So if he jiggled it with emotion—that jiggled the whole Web. The Web was supposed to stay stable, and being linked into it and feeling powerful emotion perturbed the whole thing. No wonder it kept trying to kick him out!

Yes.

Maybe that was why other people weren’t able to get as deep into it as he was. Because as long as he had a problem, he tended to think, rather than feel; he saved feeling for when he had the leisure to indulge in it.

Yes.

He needed to know how to find the Karsite agents. And that was for everyone, for all of Valdemar.

Trivial. Valdemar will persist. It may weaken for a time, but it will return, so long as balance persists. And I am balance.

Miserable—I won’t get mad. I won’t get mad. Stupid damn thing! Doesn’t it know if the Karsites get their way—

If the Karsites get their way!

This... thing... only knew what was and what had been. It couldn’t imagine, or plan, or do anything that required speculation. It wasn’t really alive, so all it could do was repeat what it already knew.

If there aren’t any Heralds or Companions, there won’t be a Web. There won’t be a Valdemar.

There was a long, long pause.

Impossible.

That’s what these irritations want. And they’ll get it, too. Now he drew on every unlikely, hysterical, ridiculous scenario that Amily had used to frighten herself with and exaggerated them a hundred times over. He flung the whole house of cards at the stone and showed it Nikolas going to pieces, the King himself falling apart, the Monarchy in ruins, the factions in the Court taking advantage of the situation and bringing out every petty quarrel they’d ever had—

Then the Karsite army crossing the border with hordes of demons that sought out Heralds and Companions and killed them, until there weren’t enough to sustain the Web, and the Web itself collapsed.

When he was done, he felt more exhausted than he ever had been in his life. If he’d had to crawl two paces