He found himself, in his vision, standing on a path made of silvery sand that sparkled with a subdued glimmer, in the midst of an opalescent mist that swirled all around him. Or rather, he seemed to be standing there; this body was an illusory one, and he could change it to another form if he concentrated on it. This was a comfortable form, one he didn't have to think about to maintain, and it didn't seem reasonable to waste time and energy changing it to something else. He still was not certain if the Moonpaths themselves were an illusion; he had never bothered to test his surroundings to find out. The mist had no scent, and was neither cool nor warm; the sand beneath his feet neither so soft as to impede his steps, nor so hard as to be noteworthy.
"Tre'valen?" he called out into the mist, his voice echoing off into the distance in a way that had no counterpart in the real world. "Dawnfire?" The mist swirled about him, following his words with eddies of faint colors that faded within moments.
He had no answer immediately, but he didn't expect one. The Avatars were not in existence to serve and please him, after all, and he was well aware of that. Instead, he moved out along the path of soft sand, occasionally calling the names of his friends quietly into the mist. Eventually, if they were not occupied with something more important, they would come to him.
And so they did. They came winging through the mist in their bird shapes, forms the shape of a vorcel-hawk, but the size of a human, and with the sparkling, fiery, multicolored plumage of a firebird. He knew they were coming before they arrived, for they lit up the mist in the far distance like lightning within a thundercloud as they flew toward him, their flight paths spiraling around each other, leaving a double helix of light through the fog in their wakes.
Here they did not need to backwing to a landing as they would if they had taken "real" hawk-forms in the world. They simply slowed, then went into a hover above the path, then flowed into the vaguely avian-human shapes they normally wore to speak to him. Tre'valen was dressed as the Shin'a'in shaman he had been before he became the Star-Eyed's Avatar; but Dawnfire, though clearly Tayledras rather than Shin'a'in, wore a simple tunic that could not be readily identified as coming from any particular culture. Her long silver hair moved slightly, like the mist that swirled slowly about her. They both seemed to be completely ordinary humans—except for their eyes.
Not eyes, but eye-shaped windows on the night sky... the darkness of all of night spangled with the brightest of stars. So beautiful….
It was said that Kal'enel Herself had eyes like that; in this way She marked these two as Her Avatars, a way that could not be mistaken for anything else.
"Younger Brother!" Tre'valen greeted him warmly. "It is far too long since we have seen you, but I pledge that we have not been idle in that interval!"
"Not all that long for a mere mortal," he corrected with a smile, "but a great deal has been happening to us as well. I was not certain if you knew about what we have uncovered and learned, and besides that, I wanted to make sure that you two were all right after the Working."
Not that I could have done anything if they weren't.
Dawnfire shrugged fluidly. "Poor young Karal bore the brunt of our Working, and we two were only a little drained," she said, and extended a cool hand to him, which he took in brief greeting. "It sounds as if you have not been idle either—you in the Tower."
That confirmed one of his guesses, that the Avatars, for all their power, were neither omniscient nor omnipotent. They were bound by some physical laws at least. Was that because they were not really physically "dead," as the spirit-Kal'enedral were? Or was it because they had been granted wider powers by the Star-Eyed?
"Would you like to tell me what you can, or hear what news I have first?" he asked.
"Your news; I suspect that much of what we have to tell you will be mere confirmation of what you already know," Tre'valen told him. "We have been ranging far in the world and in the Void, to see what changes the Working wrought on the energy-patterns of the Storms, and how far-reaching those changes were. I fear I bring no startlingly good news."
An'desha nodded, and detailed everything that had been happening since the "Working" of which Karal had been the channel; from the effect that being the focus of so much energy had wrought on the young Karsite priest, to the departure of the gryphons and the arrival of Sejanes and Master Levy, to the comings and goings of so many Kal'enedral, to Che'sera's intense interest in him. Lastly, he described the events of the afternoon, the opening of the hidden trapdoor and the discovery of the workshops below.
They both listened with concentration and apparent interest—and surprise when he described the workshops. So, the existence of the workshop is something that the Star-Eyed did not tell them, though Her agents have certainly been about. Interesting.
"There may be answers there," Tre'valen said at last, and for a fleeting moment, his face took on that "listening" expression that Karal wore when either Florian or Altra Mindspoke him. An'desha wondered if the Star-Eyed might be speaking to Her Avatar at that instant, and his next words might have been a confirmation of that. "Certainly Firesong should pursue the investigation of the mind-mirrors; they should not be difficult to revive nor to duplicate, and they will serve you all in the days to come."
Oh, my; even more interesting. Perhaps my intuition about the Star-Eyed's providence was well-founded.
Dawnfire placed one long hand on Tre'valen's shoulder and, with a rueful expression, admitted, "This is the only concrete advice we can give at the moment. Would it were otherwise, but the future is still trackless and without a clear path. And even our Goddess is bound by constraints She cannot break, so that we may all work out our futures with a free will."
An'desha sighed, but saw no reason to doubt her. "So we are still muddling our way through a point when there are many futures possible? I had hoped after the Working that we would at least have gotten our feet on a clear path again!"
Tre'valen looked uneasy. "The danger has only been postponed, not negated, but luckily the forces involved have not worsened," he told An'desha. "You knew that the Working was not a solution to the mage-storms, only a reprieve, and that has not changed."
"We have been tracking the results of the Working since the initial release of the energy contained in Urtho's weapon." Dawnfire took up the thread of conversation. "The effect is all that one could have wished over Valdemar, the Pelagirs, Karse and Rethwellan and even Hardorn. The waves that you sent out are canceling the waves of the mage-storms, but—only to a point."
"What point?" he asked instantly, sensing that this was important, although he did not know why yet.
"Just beyond the border of Hardorn in the East," Tre'valen told him. "Also South, just at the borders of the Haighlei Empire, and around White Gryphon and its environs, but they know how to deal with the effects. And in any case, the Storms are weak there. North, well into the Ice-Wall Mountains. To the West, well, that is Pelagir-wilds and the Storms will hardly change that. It is East that concerns us, for the Empire is the recipient of the worst of the Storms, and they are causing great havoc there, among those who depend so much upon magic."