Mercedes Lackey - Storm Warning

To discover that a terrible war that had killed countless thousands over the course of generations should never have taken place and could have been ended at any time?

Karal sighed, and his master Ulrich dismounted from his mount, a placid and reliable mule. Ulrich was no horseman, and moreover, he was a most powerful Priest-mage. He might need to work magic at any time, and needed a riding beast that would stand stock still when the reins were dropped, no matter what strangeness it heard or saw. The mule—which Ulrich called "Honeybee," for she was sweet, but had a sting in her tail in the form of a powerful kick when annoyed—was older than Karal, and looked to live and carry her master for the same number of years. Karal liked her, trusting her good sense to bring Ulrich through any common peril. Storms didn't spook her, uncanny visitations could not make her bolt, she knew when to fight and when to flee, and she was surefooted and wise in the way of trails and tracks.

But she was boring to ride, and while he could not have wanted a better mount for his master, she was the last one he would have chosen for himself.

"Patience, Karal," Ulrich said in an undertone. "Our escort is probably on his way this very moment, and will be surprised to see us waiting. We are early—it is not even Sun-height yet. You may worry when it lacks but a mark or two before Sundescending."

Karal bowed his head in deference to his master's words. Ulrich was surely right, yet—

"It seems ill-mannered, sir, to have us cool our heels at the border-crossing, when you are the envoy from Her Holiness," he said doubtfully. "And to send only a single escort—it seems a deliberate slight to me. Should we not have many guards, perhaps a Court Official, or—"

Ulrich raised his hand to halt his young protege in mid-thought. "We are two, coming from the south, wearing the plain robes of some sort of priest," he pointed out. "If the Queen sent an escort of a score of her Guards, what would the obvious inference be? That we are envoys of Her Holiness, of course. There are perils along the way, not the least of which are those who will not believe that the war between our lands is over."

Ulrich waited patiently while Karal thought out the rest of the perils for himself. Mobs of angry border people, or even a single, clever madman could plan to kill old enemies; assassins hoping to eliminate the envoys and thus the alliance were a real possibility. Even mercenaries could try to slay the envoys, hoping to start up the war again and thus ensure continued employment. For that matter, the threat need not come from a citizen of Valdemar—it could come from someone from their own land, hoping to rekindle the flames of the "holy war against the Hellspawn."

Karal shook his head mournfully, and Ulrich just chuckled. "That, my son, is why I am envoy and you are a novice. I requested that we be met by but a single escort, though I also requested one who could be trusted completely. I fear that it takes years of being steeped in deception and infamy to recognize the possibility for both."

Ulrich patted Honeybee's neck, and she sighed. Ulrich nodded at the mounts, at their own equipage. At the moment he and Karal were wearing only the plainest of their robes for travel. "As we are, with a single escort—yes, we are dressed well, and clearly Priests from a foreign land, but we could be from any foreign land. Unless we have the misfortune to come across someone who has seen a Sun-priest, we should meet with no one who will recognize our robes or our medals. Valdemar is awash with foreigners these days, many of them being escorted to Haven even as we. I think that we shall not draw undue attention to ourselves."

Karal did not answer his mentor, but in this case, he thought privately that, for once, Ulrich might be wrong. He took another covert look at the Valdemaran guards, compared the Sun-priest with them, and came up with an entirely different answer than Ulrich's.

They were both dressed with relative modesty, compared to the magnificent garments they would don once they were in the capital city and the Palace, but there were still a myriad of ways that anyone who had ever seen a Karsite would know who and what they were.

They both wore their Vkandis-medals on gold chains, first of all, round gold disks blazoned with a sun-in-glory—and how many people of moderate importance ever wore that much gold? For that matter, was there another sect that used that particular blazon? Their garments had a cut peculiar to Karse; certainly Karal had never seen any foreigner attending Her Holiness who wore anything like the Karsite costume. And if they were of moderate importance, why send an escort at all?

Oh, I suppose I worry too much. Ulrich is right; if what we have heard is true, there are foreigners arriving daily who are so outlandish that we shall not even attract a second glance.

Ulrich was certainly not particularly remarkable—many novices passed him by every day, thinking him a Priest of no particular importance. He was, in fact, utterly ordinary in looks and demeanor—of middling height, neither very young nor very old, neither handsome nor hideous, neither muscular nor a weakling. His gray hair and beard and perpetually mild expression belied the sharpness of his eyes, and his expression could change in a moment from bemused and kindly to implacable. These Valdemarans seemed to be of no particular physical type; one of the guards was lean and brown, the other muscular and blond. Not so with the two Karsites, for both were typical of anyone from their land; Ulrich could easily have been Karal's hawk-faced father; they were two from the same mold, dark-haired, dark-eyed, sharp-featured.

Perhaps that was all to the good, too. Outsiders might assume that they were related. Better and better, in fact, since Karal doubted anyone outside Karse knew that the Sun-priests were not required to be celibate or chaste, though many of them swore such oaths for various reasons. So if he and Ulrich appeared to be father and son—it might be that no one would think they were priests of any kind.

Karal rubbed his temple; all this thinking was giving him a headache. Ulrich patted his shoulder with sympathy as the guards continued to ignore them.

"Don't worry about it too much, young one," the Sun-priest said, with a kindly gleam in his black eyes. "Try to get used to the new land first, before you devote any time to learning about intrigue and hidden dangers. There will be enough that is strange to you, I think, for some few days."

The Sun-priest—the Red-robe who was once one of the feared and deadly Black-robe priests of the Sunlord, a wielder of terrible power and commander of demons—looked back down the road they had come and sighed. "You have seen so many changes already in your short lifetime, I should think you will cope better with this new place than I. To you, this must seem like a grand new adventure."

Karal choked back a reply to that; little as he wanted to be sent off into this voluntary exile, he wanted still less to be sent home in disgrace. But he did not think of this as a "grand new adventure," nor any kind of an adventure; at heart, he was a homebody. His notion of a good life meant achieving some success as a scholar, perhaps finding a suitable partner among the ranks of the female Priests, growing older, wiser, and rich in children and grandchildren. Yes, he had seen changes aplenty since he had been taken from his own family at nine, and being subject to having his world turned upside down before he was twelve had not made him any readier for having it turn again at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, or now, at sixteen.

In fact, most of the time lately he was just plain bewildered, and there were moments when the stress was so great that he feared it was visible to anyone who looked at him.