Storm Breaking

Then he removed the dagger from the dead man's eye; a thin trickle of blood followed the removal of the blade, but it took less force to pull it out of the skull than Melles had feared. The corpse of the former Emperor was already falling to pieces. He examined the wound; it could be made to look less serious. He made a few more facial wounds with quick stabs, as if Charliss had cut himself about the face in a mad frenzy. Then he placed the dagger in Charliss's hands, clenched both the flaccid hands around the hilt, pressed the point to the Emperor's breast, and shoved, piercing the heart.

He checked to make certain that he had not gotten any blood on himself, more as a reflex than anything else; he had been a professional for too long to have made so foolish a mistake.

Then he strolled casually out the door, nodding to the guards as he passed. In a few more moments, they would go in, find Charliss, and report that the Emperor, distraught and deranged by his failing magic and crumbling health, had committed suicide.

And long live the new Emperor, may he reign a hundred years.

Karal was on his knees. Altra was beside him, a glowing cat-image under his groping hand. Florian stood braced between him and the Pit, a horse-shape of Fire against the darkness. To his right, looming out of the swirling, fluctuating energies, Firesong still stood like a blinding statue of a warrior with upraised sword—a high keening sound that somehow penetrated the roar in Karal's ears came from Need, as if the sword had somehow acquired a voice. To his left, there was no sign of An'desha, but two bird-human shapes with feathers of flame wove a restless web all about a shadowed core. He couldn't see Sejanes at all across the Pit.

He sensed the energies around them were winning. They couldn't feed the Pit fast enough, and their protectors were burning out.

And yet, he was no longer afraid. Even if they didn't survive, they had fed enough of the terrible power into the Pit to prevent a second Cataclysm. As he gazed on the burning image of Florian, great peace descended on his heart, and he faced the terrible, glorious, mystical fire without flinching. Once again, he stood in the heart of the Sun and knew he was welcome there. He opened himself up to it fully, and lost himself there, past fear, past pain, past everything but the Light.

And then his awareness of self evaporated, and there was nothing more.

The light was gone; the Light was gone. There was nothing but darkness, yet Florian's image still continued to bum against that dark.

He was lying on his back. His groping hands encountered rough blankets over him, then warm fur.

"I think he's awake," said Lo'isha in a low voice.

He coughed, cleared his throat, and replied, "I am awake. How is everyone? Did the light fail?"

His question was answered with the kind of heavy silence that only occurs when someone has unwittingly asked a question that has an answer that will make him very unhappy.

"Firesong has been... hurt," Silverfox said gently. "An'desha and Sejanes are quite all right, only tired."

He tried to sit up, and felt hands on his chest holding him down. "How badly hurt is Firesong?" he asked urgently. "Can I see him? Where's Florian? Haven't you got any lights going yet?"

Again, that awkward silence, and then the answer came to him, to his last question at least, as Lo'isha asked, very softly, "What can you see?"

"Nothing," he whispered, stunned. "Only—Florian—"

"It seems that those whose guardians were entirely spirit fared the best," said Lyam in that dry way of his.

The fur draped over his legs moved. :Florian is gone, Karal,: Altra said, in the gentlest tones that Karal had ever heard him use. :I am the only one of the protectors to survive the experience. I am sorry.:

Karal moved his head, and still saw nothing but darkness and the fiery image of Florian in reverse silhouette against it. He swallowed, as the full impact of realization hit him, and felt hot tears burning their way down his face. Florian—gone? Protecting him? He blinked, but nothing changed in what he saw—or rather, what he didn't see.

"You see nothing, Karal?" Lo'isha persisted. He shook his head dumbly.

"What about Firesong?" he asked, around a cold lump in his gut and a second lump in his throat. "Is he—like me?"

"No, but—the sword, Need—she exploded in a mist of molten metal in his hands. His face and hands are badly burned." That was Lyam. "I just sent Silverfox back to him."

Although tears of mourning continued to trickle down Karal's face, he nodded. "Good," he managed. "I don't really need a Healer..." He let his voice trail off, making a kind of question out of it.

"No, Karal," Lo'isha said, with a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I'm afraid a Healer won't do you any good right now."

"Then, just leave me with Altra for a bit, would you?" he asked, and after a while, he heard them get up and move away. He felt Altra settle on his chest and legs, and began gently scratching the Firecat's ears. Tears slid down his cheeks, and Altra continued to rasp them away.

:Karal?: Altra asked, after a long silence. He answered the Firecat with a fierce hug.

"Just stay with me," he whispered.

:I'll never leave you, Karal,: Altra promised. :Never. Not for as long as you live.:

Firesong remembered the exact moment when Need lost her battle to shield him, which was right after Yfandes had evaporated into motes of energy. She had screamed—a warning, he thought—and he had let her go and flung one arm over his eyes to protect them. All he remembered after that was pain.

He hadn't ever lost consciousness, and right now, loss of all awareness would have been a blessing. Silverfox had given him something that turned the terrible agony into bearable agony, but he still hurt. Almost as bad was the knowledge of what had happened to him. He knew what he looked like—and worse, he knew what he was going to look like. No Healer would be able to keep scar tissue from forming, and his face—

He struggled to keep back tears, tears of pain, tears of loss. Yes he had been vain, and why not? His face had won him all the lovers he had ever wanted, and now no one would ever give him a second glance.

A touch on his arm made him start and open his tightly-closed eyes. "Ashke, I am here," said Silverfox, his face full of concern. "Are you in pain?"

"Better to ask, what doesn't hurt," he replied, trying to make a feeble joke of it. "I am trying not to scream; it is very impolite, and would frighten An'desha."

"We have sent the Kal'enedral out for stronger pain drugs," Silverfox told him tenderly, resting one hand on the part of his arm that was not burned. "They should be back soon. The blizzard stopped, and the snow is melting, and in a little we will have gryphons or horses here to take you to k'Leshya. Kaled'a'in Healers are very good." He hesitated, then added, "It is a pity they are not good enough to help Karal."

That snapped him out of the slough of self-pity he was wallowing in. "What about Karal?" he asked sharply.

"I think—he has lost his sight." Silverfox looked away for a moment.

Lost his sight? For one bitter moment, Firesong actually envied him. Better to lose his sight than to go through life, scorned and pitied, to have people look away from you because they could not bear the sight of you—

But even as he thought that, he rejected the thought with anger at himself. You fool, he told himself scornfully. You vain, self-important fool! You are alive with all your senses; you are neither crippled nor incapacitated, and you still have Aya.

As if to underscore that last, the firebird trilled a little from his perch beside Firesong's pallet.

Poor Karal, came the thought at last. "Poor lad," he sighed, "Florian, and this—" then involuntarily whimpered as the movement sent pain lacing through the burns on his face. He felt tears start up, and soak into his bandages.

Silverfox cupped his hands at Firesong's temples, and started into his eyes with fierce concentration. As Firesong looked into his eyes, some of the pain began to recede, and he almost wept again, this time with relief. "I will be glad—" he gasped, "—when those pain drugs arrive."

"They cannot arrive soon enough for me," Silverfox muttered, then managed something of a wan smile. "You are being much braver than I would. I cannot bear pain."

"It is not too bad, except when I am alone," Firesong said, still gazing into those warmly compassionate eyes.

And somehow, those eyes softened further. "In that case, ashke, I will never leave you." the handsome kestra'chern said softly. "If you think you can bear to have me here."

And for a moment, Firesong forgot any pain at all.

An'desha lay curled up with his face to the wall, and Karal could tell by his shaking shoulders that he was weeping silently. The view through Altra's eyes was rather disconcerting, given that Altra's head was about at knee-height, and he had to look up to see peoples' faces when they stood. But at least now, with Altra glued to his leg and lending him the view, he wasn't bumping into things, nor tripping over them.

Karal knelt down beside An'desha's pallet, and put a hand on his shoulder. "If you keep this up much longer," he said, trying not to dissolve into tears himself and make things worse, "you're going to be sick."

An'desha only shook his head violently, and Karal tried to remember exactly what it was that Lo'isha had told him.

"An'desha blames himself for the loss of the others, especially the Avatars," the Kaled'a'in had said. "You must persuade him to walk the Moonpaths, or—or it will be bad for his soul, his heart. I have not been able to persuade him."

The older man had left it at that, but there was no doubt in Karal's mind that he knew how An'desha had managed to help him through his own crisis of conscience. Altra had seconded the Shin'a'in's request as soon as Lo'isha was off tending to some other urgent problem. After that, how could Karal have possibly refused?

"There wasn't anything you did or didn't do that would have made a difference for the better," Karal persisted. "How could there have been? We tried to do more than Urtho could, and it still came out better than we had any reason to expect!"

"I should have known about those other weapons," An'desha said, his voice muffled by his sleeve. "I should have known what they'd do when they started to fail."

"How?" Karal asked acerbically. "Those were Urtho's weapons, not Ma'ar's! How could you have known what they were going to do? Foresight? When not even the Foreseers were able to give us decent advice?"

One red eye emerged from the shelter of An'desha's sleeve. "But—" he began.

"But, nothing," Karal said with great firmness. "You aren't a Foreseer, and you don't have Urtho's memories, you have Ma'ar's. And if you'd go walk the Moonpaths, you'd find out from the leshy'a that I'm right."

An'desha winced, blanching, which looked quite interesting though Altra's eyes. "I can't—" he began.

Karal fixed him with what he hoped was a stem gaze, even though he couldn't feel his eyes responding the way they should. "That sounds exactly like what someone who's been thrown says," he replied. "What do you do when a horse throws you?"

"You get back on," An'desha said faintly, "but—"

"You've already used 'but' too many times." Karal patted his elbow. "Try saying, 'all right," instead."

"All right," An'desha replied obediently, then realized he'd been tricked. Karal wasn't about to let him off.

"Go," he said, and got unsteadily to his feet again. Instead of looking down, he sensed that his head was in a position of looking out, echoing Altra's head-posture. "Go walk the Moonpaths. I want you to, Lo'isha wants you to. That ought to be reason enough, right there."

Having finished what he had to say, and having partly tricked An'desha into agreement, he left and returned to his own pallet, far from the others, where he sank down onto it, exhausted by holding back his own emotions, and cried himself to sleep.

"Karal."

He looked around, startled. He wasn't in his bed in the Tower anymore; he was standing in the middle of—of nowhere he recognized. There was opalescent mist all around him, and a path of softly glowing silver sand beneath his feet. Not only that, but it was his own eyes that he was looking out of, not Altra's.

Where was he? This wasn't like any dream he had ever had before. In fact, it was rather like the descriptions that An'desha had given him of the Moonpaths. But that was a place that only Shin'a'in could reach, wasn't it?

Wasn't it?

"Of course not," said that voice again, teasingly familiar. "Anyone can come here, they just see it differently. But Altra thought that after all you've been through, you probably wouldn't want to visit Sunheart for a little."

This time, when he turned around, there was someone there—or rather, four someones, two male and two female. Two of them, the ones standing hand-in-hand, with vague bird-forms swirling about them, he recognized immediately.

"Tre'valen!" he exclaimed "Dawnfire! But—"

"Oh, heavens, you didn't think we'd burned up or some such nonsense, did you?" Dawnfire laughed. "It takes more than a storm of mage-energy to destroy a spirit! We just lost the parts of ourselves that held us in your world, that's all."

"You did?" said someone else, incredulously, "That's all?" Karal found, without any surprise at all, that An'desha had somehow come to stand beside him. "But, why didn't you come back when I called you then?"

"Because—well—we can't." Tre'valen actually looked shamefaced. "I'm afraid that we overstepped the bounds of what we were actually permitted to do to help you. The Star-eyed wasn't precisely put out, but...."

Dawnfire interrupted him. "You'll have to come here to meet us from now on," she said ruefully. "But if you're going to be a shaman, you ought to get all the practice you can in walking the Moonpaths anyway."

"All I can think of is how glad I am that I didn't—" An'desha began, but it was the strange young man that interrupted him this time. He looked very familiar, but Karal could not imagine why. Thin and not particularly muscular, but with a build that suggested agility, he had sandy brown hair that kept flopping into his blue eyes, and a friendly, cheerful manner.

"Nothing you did or didn't do made any difference in what happened to us, An'desha," the young man said. "Part of it was purest chance, and the rest was that we took on more than we had any right to think we could handle. and we managed to carry it off anyway. We dared. Right, Karal?"

At this point, Karal had an idea that he knew who the young man was, and he gave voice to it. "Right—Florian," he replied, and was rewarded by a wink, a flash of a grin, and a nod. "But if this is where all of you came—after—where are Vanyel, Stefen, and Yfandes?"

"Free of the forest for one thing, and high time, too, if you ask me," Florian replied. "And probably if you ask them. I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time, but I suspect they were stuck there a lot longer than they thought they would be."

Karal hadn't the faintest idea what Florian was talking about, and some of his bewilderment must have shown on his face. Florian chuckled.

"Never mind," he said. "Basically, they've made decisions about their destinations, and they didn't have a lot of time to make sure they got properly placed, so they've already gone on. I can't tell you what they decided, but it's going to be fine. As for me," he continued with a wink, "I've made mine, too, but I wasn't so picky. It should be obvious if you think about it, but don't tell any Heralds, all right?"

Karal nodded solemnly; Florian's decision was obvious, though he doubted that his friend was going to look anything like he did at the moment when he returned to the world.

Then again, maybe he would. Karal branded that face into his memory. If in fifteen or twenty years' time, Karal—or rather, Altra—saw a Herald who looked like this, they would both know who it was.

I'd better remember that he won't remember, though, and not go rushing up to him and greet him as my long-lost friend.

Even though that would be precisely what he was.

"'Florian—" he faltered, and continued. "I've never had a friend like you."

"Well, you'll have one again in time," the irrepressible Florian interrupted. Evidently he was in no mood for sorrowful good-byes or recriminations. He cut short any other attempts at speech by embracing his friends. "Now, you go back to Valdemar and get into as much mischief as possible with Natoli, and I'll go take care of my business, and eventually we'll meet again. It's not 'good-bye,' Karal, it's 'see you later.' All right?"

What else could he do but agree, and return the hearty embrace? With a cheery wave, Florian faded into the mist, and was gone, leaving Karal behind with tears in his eyes and a smile on his lips.

Now he was alone with An'desha and the old woman.

This must be Need, he realized, listening to her give An'desha some tart and intelligent pieces of advice. "And as for you, young man," she said at last, turning her clever gaze on him, "I heartily agree with that young scamp, Florian. You're too sober by half, and just because you can't see things for yourself, that's no reason to go back to that gloomy country of yours and sit in a corner and mope. Go get into mischief with that young lady of yours; I had plenty of apprentices like her in my time, and I suspect she'll keep you hopping and she won't let you feel sorry for yourself."

"Probably not, my lady," he replied politely, thinking that her assessment of Natoli was remarkably accurate for someone who didn't actually know her.

"Now, since you asked earlier, as for me, I'm taking a long-delayed rest. Maybe you'll see me and maybe you won't, but I'll be damned if I ever go sticking myself into a piece of steel again!" She gave both of them a brief hug. "Now, you both stop ruining good pillows with salt water, and go and get some living done."

And with that, she turned and stalked off into the mist, leaving him and An'desha alone. Tre'valen and Dawnfire had already vanished while their attention was on Need.

"Now what?" he asked.

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.

Altra would stay with him to provide him with "eyes," but he had the love of friends, awareness of himself, and hope for the future to give him vision, vision without sight, perhaps, but as true and clear as anyone could imagine.

The End