Storm Breaking

Elspeth got up and paced restlessly beside the windows. The weather in Hardorn had deteriorated again, but it was not yet as foul as it had been before the last protection went into place. They were currently between snowstorms, and the sun shone down with empty benevolence on the dazzling fresh snow. Elspeth was not looking forward to the resumption of blizzards, but at least the increase in the number of snowstorms was keeping the number of curiosity seekers down. Virtually everyone who could come in himself to pledge to Tremane had, and a few days ago, their old friend Father Janas appeared with another casket of earth, collected from all of those who wished to pledge themselves and their land to their new King and could not come in person. Now Tremane 'felt' virtually every part of his realm, which was both an advantage and a disadvantage. He knew where every trouble spot was, and when a Storm began its march across the face of Hardorn, Elspeth was personally quite glad that it was Tremane who experienced the sickness of his land, and not her.

But now the system of signal-towers was fully functional again, and at least warning could be sent out when something did go wrong out in the hinterlands. The precise locations of where the circles of altered land would fall were sent out well in advance of the Storms by means of the towers. If things were not precisely under control, at least they were in a better state than they had been. There was one authority in Hardorn again, and resources were not being wasted on warfare. A few skirmishes with Tashiketh's gryphons had put an end to further fighting.

There was still the pressing problem of how to protect the nodes and the Tayledras Heartstones. She was all too conscious of the Heartstone right under the Palace at Haven; if that went rogue, it could very well destroy the Palace, all the Collegia, and perhaps a good section of Haven as well. The loss of life would be horrendous. The Palace complex had been partially evacuated, but with mixed results and quite a bit of ongoing confusion. She had seen enough magical destruction in the capital of Hardorn; she had no trouble envisioning the same level of destruction visited on her own home.

She started to shake, just thinking about it, and turned her gaze to look out the window for a moment so that no one in the room would see her face and the expression she wore. As so often happened these days, her timing was just right. She was the first to see and recognize the latest arrival to Tremane's court.

The procession was just entering the courtyard as she glanced down at the gates, and the glitter of the sun on shining metal and blinding gold and white trappings caught her eye first. Then she saw the standard, and who rode beneath it, and she gasped, catching the attention of everyone else.

'Oh, gods—' she said, feeling as if she had just been struck a numbing blow to the head and had not yet felt the pain. She wondered wildly for a moment if she was hallucinating; there was no way that she should be seeing what she saw out the window. 'Oh, ye gods, this cannot be happening! This is too strange even for me.'

'Elspeth?' Darkwind said, catching the timbre of her voice without knowing what caused it. 'Ashke, what's wrong?' The chair legs grated on the wooden floor as he hastily shoved his seat back. He got up and hurried to her side; unable to speak, she simply pointed out the window.

His eyes widened, and he choked, completely unable to get even a word of exclamation out.

'King Tremane,' Elspeth managed to say as Darkwind was struck dumb, 'You have a very important visitor, and I think you had better get down to the courtyard now.'

'Why?' he asked, a little resentfully, for he had gotten rather tired of meeting so many delegations in the cold over the past several weeks.

'You should just—do what she says,' Darkwind managed to croak.

Tremane looked skeptical. His tone took on an edge of sarcasm. 'Who's here? The Emperor?'

'No,' Elspeth replied. 'Solaris, High Priest of Vkandis and Son of the Sun and her entourage.' She glanced down again. 'And the Firecat Hansa,' she added.

Behind her, there was a muffled curse, and the sound of a chair clattering against the floor as it fell over, and by the time she had turned to see what Tremane was doing he was already gone.

'We'd better go down there, too,' Darkwind finally managed to get out. 'We should be there to welcome her.' She nodded, and gestured to the fascinated gryphon to accompany them.

By the time they reached the courtyard, however, Tremane had already given Solaris as respectful a welcome as anyone could have wished, even the Son of the Sun and the Mouth of Vkandis, given that she had arrived with no warning. And she in her turn had remained polite, which was all that Elspeth could have hoped for, given the circumstances.

'I have been traveling for many days at the express orders of Sunlord Vkandis,' Solaris was saying, as Elspeth got within earshot. 'It was, I believe, at precisely the moment when you were bound to the land of Hardorn that —'

Then she caught sight of Tashiketh—who had reared up on his hind legs and was holding his foreclaws extended in a peculiar manner that was obviously a ritual salute. And Solaris stared at the gryphon with a look of shock and complete disbelief on her face, her hands automatically moving to form a similar salute.

That's odd; she's seen gryphons before. So why is she looking at Tashiketh as if he were some new kind of creature?

As she stared at him in complete disbelief, Tashiketh intoned something in that odd gabble that Elspeth thought sounded like Karsite. Evidently, so did Solaris, who blinked and stammered something back. It was the very