Storm Breaking

Tremane colored a little, and coughed. 'I seem to recall some injudicious words to the effect of wanting an ability that would give me that information.'

Darkwind's smile turned ironic, but he didn't say anything. He didn't have to.

Surely every culture has a variation on the saying, 'Be careful what you ask for, you may get it.'

'Well, sometimes the Hundred Little Gods display an interesting sense of humor,' Tremane sighed.

'They've displayed it more directly than I think you realize,' Darkwind told him. 'Are you aware that thanks to this 'gift' that Janas bestowed on you, that you are literally bound to Hardorn? You can't leave, at least not for long.'

Tremane shot him a skeptical glance. 'Surely you are exaggerating.'

Darkwind shook his head. 'I am not. You will not be able to go beyond the borders of this land for very long. Janas was not speaking figuratively as we both assumed when he made his explanations to you. I know enough of magical bindings to recognize one on you, and I doubt that anyone can break it. This is the magic of a very primitive religion, meant to ensure that a ruler could not get wandering feet and go off exploring when he should be governing.'

Elspeth watched Tremane's face; though normally opaque, this experience had left him open—not as open as an ordinary person, but open enough for her to read his expressions. 'What you're saying is, this earth-binding they put on me ensures that there is no possibility of going back to the Empire.'

Darkwind held his hands palm up. 'The most primitive magics tend to be the strongest, the hardest to break. Perhaps a better word would be primal. I suspect this one may date back to the tribes wandering this area before the Cataclysm. It was a fascinating piece of work to watch; no chants, no real ritual, just a tonal component as a guide for invocation, and of course the mental component. Simple but powerful, and that argues for a piece of work that is very old, and so proven by time that it is, in fact, a benchmark by which later magics could be judged.' As Tremane sat there, with a dazed look in his eyes and a numb expression, Darkwind warmed to his subject. 'It really does make sense. If you have a tribe that has recently settled, given up nomadic, hunting and herding ways and gone into agriculture, it stands to reason that your best leaders, the ones who are likely to be the most successful at defending your settlement from other nomads, are the people most likely to want to go back to the unsettled ways. If you want to keep them where they belong and give them a powerful incentive to hold the land in trust and not plunder and ruin it, you'd bind them to it.'

'I get the point, all too clearly,' Tremane interrupted dryly. 'Seeing as I am the one blessed with this particular application of 'primitive' magic, and now am prisoner in an all too clear way.' He rubbed his head with his hand, absently. 'No disrespect to you, Darkwind k'Sheyna, but speculation about the origin of this bit of religious arcana is moot, and it can probably wait until the happy day when everything is settled again and you and Janas can argue about history to your hearts' content.'

Darkwind was not at all embarrassed. In fact, he graced Tremane with the expression of a teacher whose student has missed the point of the lesson. But all he said aloud was, 'Duke Tremane, if you wish to know how and why a magic works the way it does, you must learn or deduce its origin and purpose. In complex spell-work, the causes, triggers, paths, and effects are not always obvious, and are often fragile. In more primal spell-work, the variables may be fewer, but they are not necessarily any more obvious. You cannot unmake a thing—supposing you should choose to do so—without knowing how it is made.'

'Supposing I should choose to do so...' Tremane's voice trailed off, and he stood up to go look out the window. 'I am not, by nature, a religious man,' he said, with his back to them.

'We rather gathered that, sir,' Elspeth put in, her tone so ironic it made Tremane turn for a moment to give her a searching look.

'There is not much in the Empire that would make one believe in gods, much less that they have any interest at all in the doings of mortals,' he said, looking straight into her eyes. 'Tangible effect is the focus in the Empire. Results and tasks of the day take a distinct precedence over thoughts of divine influence or the spirit world. The closest thing to a religion of state is a form of ancestor veneration, which takes its higher form as the honoring of previous Emperors and their Consorts, who are collectively known as the Hundred Little Gods. Not that there are exactly a hundred, but it's a nice, round figure to swear by.'

'I'd wondered about that,' Darkwind murmured.

'Nor have I in the past been one to put credence in either predestined fate or omens. Nevertheless,' he continued, 'since arriving here, I have been confronted, time and time again, with situations that have literally forced me into the path I am now taking. I find myself beginning to doubt the wisdom of my previous position regarding destiny.'

Elspeth could not resist the opportunity. 'If you would care for some further proof that your previous position on the divine is faulty,' she offered, 'I am sure that High Priest Solaris would be happy to arrange for a manifestation of Vkandis Sunlord.'

It was wrong of her, but after all that Tremane had been responsible for, she could not help but take a certain amount of vengeful pleasure in the way that his face turned pale at the mere mention of Solaris' name.