Medren just shook his head and hoped Stef would never have to test that particular faith. “All right,” he said after a moment's thought. “What about this -”
Vanyel closed his weary eyes for a moment, and thought longingly, selfishly, of rest, of peace, of a chance to enjoy the bright summer day.
But there was no peace for Valdemar, and hence, no rest for Herald Vanyel.
At least the news out of Karse was something other than a disaster, for a change.
“So there's no doubt of it?” he asked the messenger. “The Karsites have declared the use of magic anathema?”
The dust-covered messenger nodded. It was hard to tell much about her, other than the fact that she was not a Herald. Road grime had left her pretty much a uniform gray-brown from head to toe. “There's more to it than that, m'lord,” she said. “They're outlawing everyone even suspected of having mage-craft. Just before I left, the first of the lucky ones came straggling across the Border. I didn't have time to collect much of their tales, but there's another messenger coming along behind me who'll have the whole of it.”
“Lucky ones?” said the Seneschal, puzzled. “Lucky for us, perhaps, but since when has it been lucky for enemy mages to fall into our hands?”
“Aye, it wouldn't seem that way, but 'tis,” she replied, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead, and leaving a paler smear through the dirt and sweat. “The ones we got are the lucky ones. They're the ones that 'scaped the hunters. They're burning and hanging over there, whoever they can catch. 'Tis a bit of a holy crusade, it seems. Like some kind of plague, all of a sudden half of Karse wants to murder the Gifted.”
“Good gods.” The Seneschal ran his hand over his closed eyes. “It sounds insane -”
“How did it start?” the Lord Marshall asked bluntly, “or do you know?”
The messenger nodded. “Lord Vanyel's turning those demons back on Karse ten years ago was the start of it, but the real motivator seems to be from the priesthood.”
“The
“Sunlord Vkanda,” the messenger replied. “And there's not enough news yet to tell if it's only the one priest, or the whole lot of them.”
At that moment, a servant appeared with wine. The messenger took it and gulped it down gratefully. Lord Marshall Reven leaned forward over the table when she'd finished, his lean face intent, his spare body betraying how tense he was.
“What else can you tell us?” he asked. “Any fragment of information will help.”
The messenger leaned back in her chair. “Quite a bit, actually,” she said. “I'm trained by one of your Heralds. The one that started this crusade's a nameless lad of maybe twenty or so; calls himself The Prophet. No one knows much else about him, 'cept that he started on that there was a curse on the land, on account of them using mages. That was a bit less than a month ago. Next thing you know, the countryside's afire, and Karse's got more'n enough troubles to make 'em pull back every trooper they had on the Border. That was how matters stood a week ago when I left; gods only know what's going on in there now.”
“Have we heard from any of our operatives in Karse itself?” the Seneschal asked Vanyel. The Herald shook his head. “Not yet.” He was worried for those operatives - there were at least three of them, one Mindspeaking Herald among them - but his chief reaction was relief.
“You say this situation is causing some civil disorder?” Archpriest Everet had a knack for understatement, but he was serious enough. His close-cropped, winter-white hair was far too short to fidget with, so he fingered his earlobe worriedly instead. Beneath his bland exterior, Vanyel sensed he was deeply concerned.
Not surprising; while it might look as if this was unalloyed good news for Valdemar, that fact that it was a religious crusade meant the possibility of it spilling over the Border. There were several houses of the Sunlord within the borders of Valdemar. If they joined their fellows in this holy war against mages, not only would the Archpriest be responsible for their actions, he would be obligated to see to it that they were stopped.
