As for what would happen if the group at the Tower failed—no one could predict that, except that it would be terrible. Nature already raged out of control; could they deal with years of this?
Never mind. It was out of her hands, and that was what felt the most unreal of all. She had never been in a position where she was utterly helpless to do something about her own peril before, never been in a case where she had no control over what was going to happen. She felt demoralized and impotent, and she didn't like it one bit.
Darkwind squeezed her hand, and Gwena rubbed her soft nose against Elspeth's shoulder. Well, at least she wasn't facing this alone; no one else in this room had any more control over the situation than she did.
"It's time," Tremane said hoarsely. "it's coming."
And now it was too late to think about anything but joining mind, heart, and power with the others, disparate as they were, and shield and hold with grim determination...
"Now," Firesong said between his clenched teeth, as the Storm broke over them. Around them, the stone of the Tower rumbled and groaned, like a carriage-spring being twisted beyond its ability to return to normal. This time was unlike all the previous experiences with the energy of the Storm, in that it had a distinct sound—a hollow, screaming roar accompanied by a steady increase in air pressure. Firesong held Need up between himself and the cube-maze, spoke some apparently private words to the sword, and did something to the taut fabric of magic that Karal half-saw, half-felt—
Then the cube-maze scattered motes of light along its surfaces, toward the apex of the topmost cube, and a ring spread outward to the farthest edges of the device—and all inside that ring vanished, and in its place was what could only be described as a great Darkness. The Void. The Pit.
Karal sensed it pulling on him and let it; Florian and Altra held him anchored as he let some inner part of himself meld with that awful darkness in the center of their circle. Then there was nothing but Light and Dark; the Pit in the center, and a coruscating, scintillating, rainbow-hued play of light and power all about it. Karal felt part of himself opening to it, sensed that he had become the conduit to send that power down into the Pit, which swallowed it hungrily but did not yet demand more than he could feed it.
All of his attention was on the Pit before him; he sensed explosions of energy behind and to all sides, and the energies around him oscillated furiously.
He tried to contain them and shove them into the dark maw, but the Pit had reached the limit at which it could accept them.
He heard shouting; it sounded like An'desha's voice, but he couldn't make out what the Shin'a'in was trying to tell him. Off to his right, a shining shape emerged from the chaos of swirling, flashing light, growing brighter with every moment.
It was Firesong, with Need glowing white-hot in his hands. He trembled in agony but refused to give in to the obvious pain of his blistering flesh.
Melles paused outside the Emperor's doorway—for once unguarded, thanks to the complicity of the Emperor's personal guard. With the geas binding them in loyalty to the Emperor now quite gone, they were all of them able to think for themselves, including Commander Ethen, who had replaced the now nerve-shattered Commander Peleun. In the past several weeks, they, too, had seen and heard enough—not quite enough to take things into their own hands, but enough to make them willing to leave their posts for a carefully staged "emergency."
There was no sound in the white-marble corridor except for the ever-present screaming of the wind. Even sheltered inside their glass chimneys, the candle flames that had taken the place of mage-lights flickered in icy drafts strong enough to have earned the name of "breeze." But these gusts were no zephyrs, and the blizzard out there wasn't half as powerful as the Storm now breaking over them was likely to make it.
The Emperor was going to be utterly engrossed in his spellcasting; over the past several days, Melles had made a point of going in and out of the Emperor's chambers and the Throne Room on one pretext or another during a Storm, and he knew that Charliss was completely oblivious to everything around him when he was spell-casting.
If the Emperor had put half the effort on holding his crumbling Empire together that he was spending on maintaining his crumbling body, Melles would not have felt so impelled to remove him now.
If he had done so, Melles would not have half the allies he now had either.
He walked boldly into the Emperor's quarters, as he had any number of times over the past few days, as if in search of an official paper or something of the sort. He ignored the unconscious mages sprawled over the furniture in the outer room, taken down either by the Storm itself or the Emperor's ruthless plundering of their energies.
The Emperor would not be here or in his bedroom; Melles already knew that Charliss had ordered his servants to carry him into the empty, cavernous Throne Room and placed him in the Iron Throne itself. He made a tiny hand-sign to the two bodyguards standing on either side of the door, a pair of bodyguards from his own retinue, inserted into the Emperor's personnel with the collusion of the Guard Commander. They acknowledged his presence with a slight nod and stood aside. He opened the door to the Throne Room carefully, a fraction at a time, as he sensed the Storm building to an unheard-of fury and a new and oddly-flavored spell building inside the room in concert with it.
He wasn't certain why the Emperor had taken to casting his magics while in the embrace of the Iron Throne, wearing the Wolf Crown, but it made his own task easier. There would be no witnesses and a dozen entrances through which a murderer could have made his escape, assuming that there were even any murmurs of foul play. He frankly doubted that would be the case. People were far more likely to point to all of the loyal bodyguards on duty, each within eye- and ear-shot of the next pair, and believe the report of suicide.
Despite the roaring fires and a half-dozen charcoal braziers around Charliss' feet, the room was icy, but not still. Charliss could already have been a wizened corpse, hunched over in the cold embrace of the Throne, eyes closed, white, withered hands clenched on the arms. only the yellow gem-eyes of the wolves in the Crown watched him, and he fancied that there was a look of life in those eyes, as they waited to see what he would do. But wolves protected only cubs and territory and they had no interest in protecting individuals once those individuals were detrimental to the welfare of the pack. They would not hinder Melles in what he intended to do.
There was a tightly-woven, furiously rotating spell building up around the Emperor, a spell somehow akin to the Storm outside. Did Charliss think to tap the power of the Storm now to bolster his failing magics? If so, he was mad.
The spell neared its peak. After years of watching Charliss spell-cast, Melles knew the Emperor's rhythms and patterns. If he was going to strike, he had better do so now. He slipped a sharp dagger, pommel ornamented with the Imperial Seal, out of the hem of his heavy, fur-trimmed tunic. He had purloined this very dagger out of the Emperor's personal quarters two days ago; it was well known to be one of Charliss' favorite trophy-pieces and virtually every member of the Court would readily identify it as his and no one else's.
Now. Before Charliss woke from his self-imposed trance, realized his danger, and turned all that terrible energy on him.