Storm Breaking

been a blizzard howling across the face of Hardorn for the past three days, the strangest such storm that Elspeth had ever seen. Greenish lightning somewhere up above the solid curtains of snow illuminated the entire sky in flashes, yet revealed nothing but white. There were reports of whirlwinds, and of spirits riding the wind, strange creatures blowing before it. None of these reports had been verified, but Elspeth would not discount any of them.

Every time that Storms came through, the effect was worse—although every one of the node-shields held with no apparent problems. But this Storm was going to be worse, much worse, than any of the previous lot. This was the return of the initial blast that had caused all of the storms, so long ago.

As for what would happen if the group at the Tower failed—no one could predict that, except that it would be terrible. Nature already raged out of control; could they deal with years of this?

Never mind. It was out of her hands, and that was what felt the most unreal of all. She had never been in a position where she was utterly helpless to do something about her own peril before, never been in a case where she had no control over what was going to happen. She felt demoralized and impotent, and she didn't like it one bit.

Darkwind squeezed her hand, and Gwena rubbed her soft nose against Elspeth's shoulder. Well, at least she wasn't facing this alone; no one else in this room had any more control over the situation than she did.

'It's time,' Tremane said hoarsely. 'it's coming.'

And now it was too late to think about anything but joining mind, heart, and power with the others, disparate as they were, and shield and hold with grim determination...

'Now,' Firesong said between his clenched teeth, as the Storm broke over them. Around them, the stone of the Tower rumbled and groaned, like a carriage-spring being twisted beyond its ability to return to normal. This time was unlike all the previous experiences with the energy of the Storm, in that it had a distinct sound—a hollow, screaming roar accompanied by a steady increase in air pressure. Firesong held Need up between himself and the cube-maze, spoke some apparently private words to the sword, and did something to the taut fabric of magic that Karal half-saw, half-felt—

Then the cube-maze scattered motes of light along its surfaces, toward the apex of the topmost cube, and a ring spread outward to the farthest edges of the device—and all inside that ring vanished, and in its place was what could only be described as a great Darkness. The Void. The Pit.

Karal sensed it pulling on him and let it; Florian and Altra held him anchored as he let some inner part of himself meld with that awful darkness in the center of their circle. Then there was nothing but Light and Dark; the Pit in the center, and a coruscating, scintillating, rainbow-hued play of light and power all about it. Karal felt part of himself opening to it, sensed that he had become the conduit to send that power down into the Pit, which swallowed it hungrily but did not yet demand more than he could feed it.

All of his attention was on the Pit before him; he sensed explosions of energy behind and to all sides, and the energies around him oscillated furiously.

He tried to contain them and shove them into the dark maw, but the Pit had reached the limit at which it could accept them.

He heard shouting; it sounded like An'desha's voice, but he couldn't make out what the Shin'a'in was trying to tell him. Off to his right, a shining shape emerged from the chaos of swirling, flashing light, growing brighter with every moment.

It was Firesong, with Need glowing white-hot in his hands. He trembled in agony but refused to give in to the obvious pain of his blistering flesh.

Melles paused outside the Emperor's doorway—for once unguarded, thanks to the complicity of the Emperor's personal guard. With the geas binding them in loyalty to the Emperor now quite gone, they were all of them able to think for themselves, including Commander Ethen, who had replaced the now nerve- shattered Commander Peleun. In the past several weeks, they, too, had seen and heard enough—not quite enough to take things into their own hands, but enough to make them willing to leave their posts for a carefully staged 'emergency.'

There was no sound in the white-marble corridor except for the ever-present screaming of the wind. Even sheltered inside their glass chimneys, the candle flames that had taken the place of mage-lights flickered in icy drafts strong enough to have earned the name of 'breeze.' But these gusts were no zephyrs, and the blizzard out there wasn't half as powerful as the Storm now breaking over them was likely to make it.

The Emperor was going to be utterly engrossed in his spellcasting; over the past several days, Melles had made a point of going in and out of the Emperor's chambers and the Throne Room on one pretext or another during a Storm, and he knew that Charliss was completely oblivious to everything around him when he was spell- casting.

If the Emperor had put half the effort on holding his crumbling Empire together that he was spending on maintaining his crumbling body, Melles would not have felt so impelled to remove him now.