"A basket, suspended between them. It is perfectly safe," Tashiketh assured her. "There are some minor spells on the basket to make it and the contents light; you can renew these easily enough, and the only thing you will need to take care with is that you go to ground during Storms."
"Our gryphons use the same means," Darkwind seconded. "It's safer than you'd think. You'll be able to cross into Karse within a few days, even with having to land twice or three times a day as a Storm passes."
"Then I thank you, for I will have to seal off the Temple as well as our nodes, and whether or not Tremane will believe that, it will be a harder task than this." Her words were still a little sardonic, but she smiled, and Elspeth sensed that Solaris would no longer be able to say in truth that she hated Tremane of Hardorn.
"And you?" Father Janas asked Elspeth and Darkwind. Darkwind answered for both of them.
"It is already accomplished," Darkwind said, his voice heavy with tired content. "Gwena has sent the word to Rolan; Rolan has sent it on to Skif's Cymry, who will detail it to the Kaled'a'in of k'Leshya Vale. They will see to it that Tayledras and Shin'a'in alike have the information, and our nodes and Heartstones will be protected within days. Messages will go from Valdemar to every White Winds mage in every land, and from there—wherever the word needs to go."
"Your Companions are useful friends," Father Janas said with envy. "Perhaps there will be room for them in Hardorn in the future." He looked shyly at Solaris. "And there should be room for Temples to the Sunlord as well, I should think. When it all comes down to it, what is done for the cause of Good is done in the name of every Power of the Light."
She smiled; the first open, unshadowed smile that Elspeth had seen on her face since she arrived here. "And on that very optimistic note, I shall thank you and beg leave to go to bed myself," she said, getting to her feet. "Hansa and I have a long journey in the morning."
"Room for everyone," Darkwind echoed, as he and Elspeth walked slowly to their own quarters. "That is not so bad a way to conduct one's land."
"I know," she replied saucily. "We've been doing it that way in Valdemar for some time now."
And now, at least, we have some assurance we will continue to be able to, she thought. And now we can spare some prayers and energy for Karal and the rest where they are. May all our gods help them, for we cannot.
Emperor Charliss sat in, not on, the wooden Throne in his private quarters, and plotted revenge, for revenge was all he had left to hold him to life. His mind was clear, despite the hellish mix of drugs his apothecary had concocted on his orders, to dull his pain and sustain his failing body. That was because the mix included drugs to keep his mind from becoming clouded. Outside his quarters, a physical blizzard raged, as it had raged for the past three weeks. The mage-storms, too, passed through Crag Castle several times every day, leaving most mages shuddering with the aftereffects. He wasn't suffering from that difficulty, though; or if he was, it was insignificant in the light of the degeneration of his body.
Although he did not appear to take any notice of what was going on outside this suite, such was not the case. He knew very well what Melles was up to; discrediting the Emperor even with the Imperial Army, spreading truths, half-truths, and lies to make it appear that only Baron Melles had the welfare of the Empire in his heart. He was also quite well aware that Melles was doing a fine job of holding the Empire together, even if it was with devious and dubious means. He knew that Melles was using the Emperor's treatment of Tremane as a weapon to bring the feuding political factions of the Empire together under Melles' control. It was a ploy that would not have occurred to Charliss, but in retrospect, given that Melles was detested by at least a quarter of the Great Players in the game of Empire, and feared by another quarter, the only way he could have united them was to find a common enemy they could hate worse than him.
None of that mattered, for he no longer cared what Melles or any other living man did. His priorities were different, and much more personal.
The spells that kept his worn-out body going, that reinforced failing organs, were themselves failing. Each time a Storm came through, he lost more of them and was unable to replace all the spells that were lost.
He saw no way of being able to save himself; he was dying, and he knew it. He could no longer move under his own power anymore; his servants carried him from bed to Throne and back again, all within the confines of his private quarters. The long, slow decline he had anticipated had accelerated out of all recognition.
He was not afraid, but he was angry, with the kind of calculating, all-consuming anger only a man who had lived two centuries could muster. He had been cheated of the last, precious years of his life, and he knew precisely where to lay the blame for it.
Valdemar.
He had sent his scholars on a search for that benighted land and its origin, and had learned things that gave him all the more reason to assume that it was Valdemar that had unleashed these Storms across the face of the land. Valdemar had been founded centuries ago by rebellious subjects of the Empire who had escaped into the wilderness too deeply to follow. But time and distance were no barriers to revenge, as he himself very well knew. The rulers of Valdemar had probably been plotting this attack against the Empire ever since their land was founded. A plot such as this one would have taken centuries to mature, centuries to gather the power for. These Storms could not have been generated by anything less than the most powerful of Adepts working together in concert; such a weapon was fiendishly clever, diabolically complicated.
In the end it might have been his own actions in reaching for the land of Hardorn that triggered the long plots of Valdemar and gave them the opportunity to destroy those who had driven them out of their homes so long ago. He should have read the return of his envoy from Hardorn, dead, with the blade belonging to Princess Elspeth between his shoulders, for the serious warning it really was. You're too close, and we'll finish you; that had been the real message. Like a nest of bees, he had ventured too near, and now the insects would swarm him and destroy him.
It didn't really matter what the cause for their actions was, nor did it matter whether he could have done anything to prevent this. The Storms had been unleashed, he was dying, it was all the fault of Valdemar, and he was going to see to it that Valdemar didn't outlive him—at least, not in any form that the Valdemarans themselves would recognize. Like a wild bear making a final charge, in his death throes he would destroy those who were destroying him.
He had everything he needed; all of the magic of the local nodes, plus all that of his coterie of mages, plus a great deal he had hoarded in carefully-shielded artifacts. Every Emperor created magical artifacts, or caused them to be created; he could drain every one of them. Every mage he had ever worked with, whether he was one of Charliss' private group or not, had a magical "hook" in him, one that tied him back to Charliss. The moment Charliss cared to, he could pull every bit of that mage's personal power and use it as if the mage was one of his personal troupe. The smartest of the mages had, of course, discovered and removed that hook—but most of them hadn't, and Charliss could use them up any time he cared to.