Storm Breaking

quilts to keep it from any possibility of damage, Altra left, saying that he thought he would return in four days.

'We'll know if the device still works or if it works at the distances that Urtho claimed in two days, of course,' Sejanes observed as they all prepared for sleep. Not that any of them really thought he would get much sleep after all the excitement that day. 'In two days he'll be in Haven, and then it will just be a matter of getting one of the Heralds to try calling us.'

He crept into his own bed—the only one that was a bed, since it was not possible for him to get into and out of a pallet on the floor.

'Or one of us can call them,' Karal pointed out, and yawned. He was already in his bedroll, with Florian curled up at his back, taking the place of Altra as a living bedwarmer. 'You know, I was really excited a couple of marks ago and I thought I'd never be able to get to sleep, but now—' He yawned again, and looked puzzled. '—now it seems as if this is an anticlimax.'

Firesong had the answer to his puzzlement. 'Well, we're all worn out—it's been a very busy day—but there's more to it than that.' He tied up his long hair to keep it from knotting up while he slept.

:Permit the old pessimist,: Need interjected. :It's not an anticlimax, child, it's that this hasn't been the climax you think it should be. We have a new tool, and nothing more. If those devices hadn't worked, we would have gone on without them. We will find the answers here, if there are answers to be found, but the teleson is not one of those answers, and that is why it feels as if what we accomplished with them is only a minor addition to our work and not a major part of it.:

'Ah.' Karal's face wore a sober expression of understanding. 'I see what you are saying. We're not at the end of our work, just the beginning, and it's not even close to the point where we can celebrate. Well. That's a little disappointing, but at least we haven't fallen back.'

'Exactly,' said Firesong. 'Which is all the more reason why you should get a good night's sleep. We'll need everyone in the morning.' He leveled a sober look at Karal. 'Especially you. I think we'll have work enough to make you and Lyam wish there were four of you.'

'I'll be glad to get back to work,' Karal said, with a weak smile, and on that note, Firesong extinguished the lights with a word, and it was not long before even he was fast asleep.

Five

What is the Shin'a'in saying? Darkwind asked himself, as he watched Duke Tremane trying to make out careful plans for the time when the mage-storms finally overcame the latest efforts to stave them off. Ah, I remember. 'The best plans never survive the first engagement with the enemy.' How has the Empire done so well when they insist on having detailed plans for everything?

The three of them sat around a small table in the Grand Duke's personal quarters, a table currently quite full, what with papers, glasses of water, and maps strewn across it.

'What do you two think?' Duke Tremane asked, setting aside the plans he and the Valdemarans had been discussing, and leaning over the table. As he looked up at them, his gray-brown eyes seemed anxious. 'My scholars haven't been able to unearth any more information about the Cataclysm, and my mages have not been able to predict anything that these mage-storms have done.'

Elspeth grimaced. 'I don't know that much either, I'm afraid,' she replied honestly. She glanced over at Darkwind, who shrugged slightly.

'I can only tell you of the effects the Cataclysm had, according to our records and traditions,' he told the Grand Duke. 'Those effects were widespread and all-encompassing. All magic was disrupted, from the Ice-Wall Mountains in the north to the borders of the Haighlei Empire in the south, and in an equal distance east, and west of what are now Lake Evendim and the Dhorisha Plains. If any shields survived the Cataclysm, I am not aware of it, but I must add that the Kaled'a'in groups my people are descended from had none of the greater mages with them.'

'So shields might survive?' Tremane persisted, fiddling nervously with a pen.

Oh, how he wants to have some way to get his sort of magic back! Now that this area of Hardorn was buffered from the worst effects of the mage-storms, Tremane had given orders for some judicious use of magic to take some pressure from scarce resources—mostly burnables. The barracks and headquarters were all heated and lit with mage-fires and mage-lights now, and about half the time food was cooked using mage-fires in the stoves. It did make things more comfortable, especially in the barracks, which had been heated with dried dung, and were hardly illuminated at all. But Darkwind and Elspeth could both tell how much the Grand Duke wanted to be able to use magic for all of the things he was used to; the only trouble with that idea was that it just wasn't possible to do so. For one thing, magical energy ran thin and low here; Ancar had depleted it sorely, and it would take a long time to recover. There was enough for lights and fires—but not for something more complicated, such as blind scrying, or creating mage-walls to keep the 'boggles' out. For another Hardorn was only buffered; there were still slight effects, and those were increasing, a little at a time, with every passing day.

Darkwind spread his hands wide, shaking his long, silverstreaked hair back over his shoulders as he did so. 'That, I cannot tell you. The people to ask would be the k'Leshya, and they are somewhat difficult to reach at the moment.'