Storm Breaking

He looked at his friend, who shrugged, but with some of his old spirit back. 'I suppose we'd better do as she says,' An'desha said. 'You know her. If we don't, she's likely to turn around and kick us out.' He toed the soft silver sand for a moment, then added, 'I'm glad you made me come here.'

'I'm glad you let me,' Karal replied, and smiled, feeling more peace in his heart than he had ever expected to have again. 'Now, let's go home.'

* * *

Karal looked back through Altra's eyes, over the tail of his Shin'a'in riding horse, a lovely and graceful palfrey. It felt very strange not to be riding Florian, but he supposed that he would get used to it after a while. Firesong rode behind him, supported by a saddle that the Shin'a'in used for riders who were ill or disabled, watching everything around him with his eyes shining behind the eye-holes of the mask covering his half-healed face. Firesong's mask was a wonder, not only because it was as extravagant and beautiful as one of his elaborate robes, but because he and Lyam had made it of materials they had scavenged from things in the Tower during the fortnight they had waited. With a base of leather and adorned with bits of crystal, wire, and feathers that Aya himself had carefully pulled from his tail and brought to Firesong while he still lay half-healed in his bed, it probably would have fetched a small fortune from a collector of such things. But Firesong was dissatisfied with it, and was already designing new ones.

All around them, the Plains were blooming in a way that the Shin'a'in said they had not seen since the Star- Eyed herself walked there. One could hardly see the grass for the flowers, which painted the landscape in wide swathes of color. The land had gone from deepest winter to the heart of spring, all in the space of a fortnight. Through Altra's eyes, Karal took in the incredible beauty with a sense of awe and wonder. According to the messages that Altra had brought from Solaris in Karse, all their friends in Haven, and Elspeth in Hardorn, the phenomenon was not confined to the Plains. All the world was in blossom, as if to make up for the ravages of the Storms.

Sejanes and An'desha had been working to discover just how magic operated, and as soon as he was able, Firesong had joined them. It had not been long before they discovered that there were no ley-lines anymore, no nodes, no huge reserves of mage-power. Magical energy had been dispersed fairly evenly across the landscape; and there wouldn't be any large magics for a very long time. That meant no Gates, of course, but it was no hardship to ride through a countryside where the sun shone down with kindly benevolence, where birds serenaded every step of the way, and there was such an all-pervasive perfume of flowers, both night-and day-blooming, that it even permeated their dreams at night. And once the clever Kaled'a'in found the means to make the carry-baskets light using the small magics that still worked, they would make the rest of their journey by air.

Karal had been given the choice of going home to Karse—a shorter journey by far—or back to Valdemar. But when all was said and done, it had not been a difficult choice. One of the first messages from Solaris had been strictly for him, commending his actions, and asking him if he would, as a personal favor to her, resume his work in Valdemar both as the Karsite envoy and as the head of the Temple outside Karse. 'With the visible evidence of your sacrifice,' she had written, 'no one in Valdemar will question your authority. Additionally, you will be dealing with the representatives of Iftel—creatures I confess I find somewhat unnerving. The Sunlord has decreed some odd things in Iftel, and I frankly do not think that outside of you there is a single Priest in the entire Temple who could treat these peoples as anything other than heretics. I do not want to offend these new brothers and sisters in any way, but I fear that if I assigned anyone else to Valdemar and Iftel, there would be blood spilled before long. However, if you want to come home, I will understand, and find a way to cope.'

The message had come on the day when they were all deciding whether to go to their homes or back to Haven.

Tarrn and Lyam had elected to return to k'Leshya, which was no surprise at all. Silverfox and Firesong, however, were going with them. Karal had half expected Firesong, at least, to want to return to his own people, but the Adept had smiled behind his mask and simply shaken his head, the crystals and bits of metal dangling from the mask tinkling softly.

'No one remembers what I looked like before in k'Leshya, he said quietly. 'And—besides, Silverfox wants to be there, and it is a familiar Vale.' It was plain in his voice, burned lips or not, that being with Silverfox was the primary reason.

An'desha rode with them, but he would not be leaving the Plains. He had elected to remain and study with Lo'isha, taking the vows of the shaman. Karal had been surprised at that as well, especially as he had been earnestly practicing magic alongside Sejanes and Firesong during the time that they waited for their hosts to put a caravan together for them.

'There is no prohibition on magic among the Shin'a'in now,' An'desha explained with a chuckle. 'There is no reason for one. I suspect that Lo'isha has it in mind for me to be the teacher to the new mages among us, in time. I should like that,' he finished softly, with a tone of contentment in his voice that Karal had never heard before. 'Ma'ar in all of his incarnations gave nothing of himself. I shall perhaps be able to balance that, eventually.'

So Lo'isha and An'desha would leave them at the edge of the Plains, and Silverfox, Firesong, Tarrn, and Lyam at k'Leshya Vale. Master Levy and Sejanes were going on, of course, and they would be joined by the Heralds who had carried the messages from Haven telling the mages and rulers of other lands how to keep their nodes from going rogue.

And Karal would be going with them. After all the advice from the spirits on the Moonpaths, he was hardly surprised when Natoli sent him a message of her own, asking him to come back to Valdemar. 'I can be your eyes, too,' she had written. 'And you can be my good sense, which I seem to have a distinct lack of. I think I need you.' Confused grammar, but not confused thoughts. He had been afraid for a little that despite the surety of others, she might not want to see him as less than he had been; he knew now that he should have given her more credit than that.

So he would be going on with Master Levy and Sejanes; back to duty, back to love. But most of all, back to a place he was already thinking of as home.