Storm Breaking

Sejanes smiled. 'That's all the theory,' he chided gently. 'But now comes the practice that will help you keep parts of yourself from interfering with or even fighting that stream of power. And it will be all the harder because you will be dealing with something you yourself can only sense dimly, like playing blind-man's bluff with an unruly stallion. And to continue that analogy, I'm not going to show you how to catch and ride the beast, because it will kill you if you try. Instead, I'm going to try to teach you how to keep 'yourself' out of its way.'

At the end of the lesson, Karal was quite certain that Sejanes' analogy of a game with an angry horse was the correct one. The inside of his head felt bruised, somehow, though certainly not as bad as he had felt after the first time he'd acted as a Channel. The lesson was over when Sejanes clapped him on the back and told him that he had done very well for his first attempt.

'You aren't the worst Channel I've ever seen, and we tend to use them more than you Westerners do,' the old mage said cheerfully. 'I don't know if the ability occurs more often in the Empire or if we Imperial mages are so lazy that we'd rather use Channels than focus power ourselves, and so we make an active effort to look for the ability. But you aren't the worst, that's for certain, and you've come to the lessons late in your life, so that's encouraging.'

:Faint praise, but better than none, I suppose,: Altra observed, wrapping himself around Karal's legs. :Natoli is waiting to talk to you.:

'I'm going to assume that since my lord Altra is here, that your young lady is ready to speak to you,' Sejanes observed. 'Go on, off with you. By the by, you'll toughen up as you practice; this should be the worst training session you'll ever endure.'

:You'll notice he said training session,: Altra observed, as Karal got up from his stool and followed the Firecat. :That doesn't say anything about the real thing.:

That hadn't escaped Karal's attention, but he really didn't want to dwell on it, not when he was finally going to get to see and talk to Natoli.

Karal took his place on the empty stool in front of the teleson; Altra draped himself over Karal's feet, and the Herald in the crystal winked, and stepped away. A moment later, Natoli moved into the place he had vacated.

She looked as if she had recovered from the boiler explosion. Her hair was a little longer than it had been when he left, and she looked at him as if she had forgotten why she was there. Suddenly he felt very shy.

'Hello, Natoli,' he said awkwardly. 'You look in good health.'

He winced as he listened to himself; was that any way to speak to a girl he really wanted to be able to kiss?

'You don't,' she said bluntly, peering at him. 'You're too pale, and too thin. What have you been doing to yourself?'

That was so very typical of her that he had to laugh, and relaxed immediately. 'As to the first, we've been living underground, and we mostly don't get to see the sun. And as to the second—have you ever tasted Firesong's cooking?' He shuddered melodramatically, and she laughed in return. 'Seriously. We're mostly eating as the Shin'a'in do; it's not that bad, just a little odd.'

'And you don't often see a fat Shin'a'in,' she said shrewdly. 'Things were quiet until Altra showed up with this contraption. We Artificers all wanted to take it apart, of course, but when we were told that the first person to try would be skinned, we gave up on the idea.' She grinned. 'We'll have to make do with trying to duplicate it from those manuscripts. If we can, we'll send one by fast Herald-courier to Solaris, and then you'll get to talk to her on a regular basis.'

'Must I?' he asked weakly. He was not ready to face Solaris just yet. He wasn't sure he would be for quite a while, actually. Her Radiance was not a comfortable person to speak to, face-to-face. For that matter, she wasn't a comfortable person to communicate with, letter to letter; he always had the feeling that he was reading something intended for an audience rather than a personal letter.

'First we have to duplicate it,' she pointed out, and smiled. 'You know, I'm very glad to see you again. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I'd wake up, and I'd wonder if you were—quite real.'

Oddly enough, he knew exactly what she meant. 'It's hard to imagine someone being real who's that far away,' he agreed. 'It's as if they never existed except in your mind.'

She flushed a little, and looked away for a moment. 'Anyway,' she continued awkwardly, 'we've been busy, though it doesn't have anything to do with the important things.' She sounded wistful. 'There's just nothing we can do right now to help with what you're doing, so we're back to the old projects like bridges and steam boilers.'

'There's nothing wrong with that,' he countered. 'Don't these things have to be done no matter what disaster might be looming?' He managed a crooked grin. 'If everything else falls apart, your bridges will be there to get people across rivers that can't be ferried or forded. Surely that's worth something.'

She shrugged but looked pleased. 'At least what we're doing is useful,' she admitted. 'It's odd, though. The