Storm Breaking

wanted them to follow. 'Charliss looks physically worse with every day that passes. He may die soon on his own; his life is sustained by magic, and that is eroding no matter how desperately he shores it up. Let things take their natural course.' He allowed himself a small, modest smile. 'After all, I am the one who is really holding the reins now; Charliss is too busy concentrating on survival. Waiting will harm nothing in the long run. With time, I may be able to persuade those same mages that Charliss is using them with no regard for the cost to them, and no regard for the real enemy we face—the Storms.'

Thayer looked around the table, and seemed to take some kind of unspoken consensus from his colleagues. 'Very well,' he said. 'We will hold our hands. We agree that the real danger to the Empire is the mage-storms and the continuing refusal of the Emperor to adequately deal with them. You must see what you can do to convince the mages that Charliss is no longer capable of dealing with the true priorities of this situation.'

He sat back in his chair and nodded. This was exactly how he wanted everything to fall out, and he relished the moment even as he relished a single sip of wine. If he were to prosper as Emperor, the Empire itself must survive and prosper; in order for that to happen, he must redirect the energies and attention of the Empire on the Storms and their effects. Just now, the energies and attentions of the Empire were seriously divided between one selfish old man who had outlived his usefulness, and the struggles to survive through worsening conditions. Either Charliss must go, or the Empire, for only one would survive through the Storms.

'I will deal with the mages, and believe me, we must have them,' he said. 'Remember, Tremane is our key. Even as the Army realized that Charliss had betrayed and abandoned one of their own, I believe that with time, I can persuade the mages of the same.'

'Good.' Thayer held out his hand. 'Strange times make for strange allies, but sometimes those are the best. The Army is with you.'

'And I,' Melles pledged, with no sense of irony, 'am with you as well. It is a pity that poor Tremane did not have as many firm allies.'

Elspeth had just finished describing the latest results from the group in the Tower, as relayed from Rolan to Gwena, when Tremane's face suddenly went white. 'Gods,' Tremane said through gritted teeth. 'Here comes another one.'

He meant another mage-storm; he felt them first, as they traveled over the face of Hardorn. They made him tremble all over, churned his stomach, and muddled his head. But that gave Elspeth, Darkwind, and Tashiketh time to brace themselves before the onset of the Storm hit them as well. At the moment, the effects were still not too bad, although every mage endured some unpleasant physical symptoms in direct proportion to how powerful he or she was. But the circles of changed soil had already begun to appear again, and it could not be too much longer before the weather shifted back to the terrible blizzards that had ravaged the countryside, and before more 'boggles' appeared as living creatures were changed by wild magic. They were just glad they had the formula to predict where those circles would appear.

Elspeth grasped the arms of her chair and clenched her own jaw; it didn't help, it never did, but at least it gave her something to do while the Storm rolled over her. Meanwhile, Father Janas watched them all with worried, wondering eyes, for he was no mage, and felt nothing when the Storms came.

This was a short, intense Storm. When it was over, she let out the breath she had been holding, let go of the arms of the chair, and put her head down on her folded arms on the table.

'Oh, I do not like that,' Tashiketh sighed. 'I do not know how you bear it.'

'You bear what you must,' Darkwind replied philosophically. 'And there are worse things to contemplate than having one's lunch jump about in one's stomach.'

'And that brings us back to the topic we were discussing,' Tremane said, his clenched hands slowly loosening as color returned to his face. 'I do not wish to cast aspersions upon the ability of your friends, Lady Elspeth, but I feel we must assume that the party in the Tower will not find a solution to the Final Storm. My concern is and must be for this land and these people; how am I to protect them? Is there any way that I can take in the damage myself, instead of having it come upon the land? Can I use earth-magic and the earth- binding to instruct the land to heal itself and to prevent the creatures here from being twisted out of all recognition? Have you any ideas at all?'

Father Janas shook his head. 'You could take the ills of the land upon yourself, my son, but not for long before it killed you. You cannot bear what the land could and live.'

'We don't have any ideas yet, but we have several kinds of magic that we can incorporate,' Elspeth mused aloud. 'Tremane, I don't think the damage to the land is going to be that terrible, but what I am afraid of is that the nodes are going to—go to a critical point where they cannot be controlled. That they are going to become rogue. I'm very much afraid that the Final Storm is going to turn them into something like the rogue Heartstone that Darkwind and I dealt with.'

'That is my concern also,' Tashiketh agreed. 'I fear that is precisely what may occur, and such a thing would be very like having a continual Storm in one place. As power fed into it, it would continue to grow. This would be a very bad thing.'

'Shelters, shields,' Darkwind muttered, frowning and glaring at nothing. 'The trouble with such things is that they are going to fail; I don't know how we could possibly make them strong enough to survive what is coming.'