Mercedes Lackey - Storm Warning

If only he could remember what they had said! But he had been too busy worrying about his own survival to pay much attention to vague hints of terrible danger to come. He'd had quite enough terrible danger on his plate at the time!

Firesong continued his speculations concerning the threat of this Empire, and he tried in vain to suggest that the peril might be coming from elsewhere. Finally, he just gave up when Firesong had the bit between his teeth about something, there was no hope for anyone else to get anything in. It was best to just nod thoughtfully and let him continue to expound.

But inside, his thoughts had a new target to circle around in worried, dizzy spirals. The danger was not from the East, but from where? What could be worse than an army, full of powerful mages and larger than anything Valdemar had ever seen, bearing down on the border?

If only he could remember....

Three

Karal patted his horse's damp neck nervously and tried not to be too obvious about watching the Valdemaran Guards out of the corner of his eye. The horse fidgeted and danced in place as it picked up his unease, and he dismounted to hold it by its halter, just under the chin. It snuffled his chest but calmed as soon as he got down on the ground beside its head; a light, warm breeze played across both of them, gradually drying the horse's sweating neck.

He continued to stroke it, his nose full of horse scent, the familiar aroma calming his own nerves. Nothing really bad had ever happened to him when he was around horses, and he kept reminding himself of that, holding it to him as if he held to a luck-talisman.

This was a good little gelding, and someone had trained it well before tithing it to Vkandis Sunlord. The sun shone on a perfect, glossy coat, skin without scars or disease, an eye bright with intelligence. Karal had no idea why the gelding's first owner had sent it in as part of his tithe, but it was obviously someone who took his duty to the Sunlord seriously, sending "the first and best fruits of his labor" as the Writ urged, rather than trying to cheat as so many did, sending only the unwanted and unusable.

A good thing for both of us that they did, Trenor.

The gelding was too small and light to go to the cavalry, and too nervous for a scout or skirmisher, so it had gone to the Temple. Karal had known quality horseflesh when he saw it, and requisitioned this youngster the moment his master and mentor suggested that he was entitled to a mount of some kind from the Temple herds.

This gelding was a lovely bay, otherwise perfect except for the slight flaw of high-bred nerves, and he'd named it after his little brother Trenor, who danced in place in much the same way when he was nervous. Trenor the gelding was, without a doubt, the best piece of horseflesh currently in the novices' stables, and every time he rode the gelding, Karal gloated a little under the envious eyes of his fellow novices. None of them were mounted nearly as well as he, although the horses they had requisitioned might look more impressive than little Trenor. They were gentlemen for the most part, and were certainly above choosing their own mounts—assuming any of them could tell a spavined breakdown from a sweet little palfrey like this one. And none of them would have stooped to asking for his advice. Doubtless, they had sent servants down to the stables, with orders to select beasts "suited to their station." Well, they paid the penalty of pride in their rumps, every time they rode, for the rest of the horses in the stables were a collection of sorry misfits. Most of them were showy pieces, huge creatures with long manes and tails, rejected from some noble warrior's string. Yes, they were lovely to look at, shiny and high-stepping, but they had iron mouths, bad tempers, or gaits that were pure torture to sit.

Not that all these traits were incurable. Karal could have settled an iron mouth or a bad temper quickly enough—but why should he, when his fellow novices neither asked for his help nor deserved it? Let the others suffer; Sunlord knew they'd made him suffer in other ways all through his training.

But that was behind him now. By the time he completed this assignment as his mentor's secretary, he would be a full Priest of Vkandis, and the equal of anyone in Karse save the Son of the Sun herself. No one could deny him that rank, no matter what his antecedents were.

He squinted up at the sun in the cloudless sky above. We are all equal in Vkandis' Light, he reminded himself. Oh, surely, and cows will take to the air and soar like falcons any day now!

Trenor tried to dance, this time with impatience, but Karal held him steady, and soothed him with a wordless croon. How long had it been since he'd seen the human version of this fidgeting bundle of nerves? Three years? No, it was only two.

But if this Valdemaran escort doesn't show up, he may be grown before we ever see home again!

It was an exaggeration, of course, but it felt as if he had been standing here for days beneath the carefully dispassionate gaze of these two young men in their blue and silver uniforms. He and Ulrich waited on a stretch of newly-cut road that was only a few leagues long, one of the tangible evidences of peace with Valdemar. These bits of roadway linked Karse and its former enemy, bridging the distance from a Karsite road to a Valdemaran one, and giving real traffic a place to cross. On the Karsite side was a gatehouse and a pair of guards where the old road joined the new one. On the Valdemaran side were facilities and guards nearly identical to their counterparts at the Karsite border-crossing behind him, except for the color and cut of the uniforms. The Valdemaran version seemed rather severe to Karal, accustomed as he was to the flowing scarlet and gold of the Karsite regulars, with the embroidered sashes of rank, feathered turbans, and brocaded vests. Plain tunics, plain breeches, only the tiniest bit of silver trim and braid... these men might have been mistaken for someone's lowest-rank servant, a stable sweeper or horseboy.

Like I was... even Father dressed more handsomely than these men do.

Karal's father had never worn such unadorned clothing in Karal's memory; the Chief Stableman of the Rising Sun Inn could boast beautifully embroidered garments from the hands of his loving wife and daughters. His pay might be meager enough, but he could put on a show fit to match anyone of his own station and even a little above. The clothing Karal had worn before the Sun-priests came for him had been plain enough, but he had been a stable sweeper, and anyway, he had only been nine. Not nearly a man, and in no way needing to prove his worth the way a man did.

I wish that there was some shade here. The sun that was so kind in the mountains, countering the chill of the breezes, was a burden here. His dark robes soaked it up and released none of the heat. But the situation was too new, too delicate, for any real amenities for the few who wished to cross from Valdemar to Karse. All brush and trees had been cut back from the road for a distance of twenty paces, so that the guards at either gatehouse had a clear view of anyone coming or going. Karal could understand that. This was not a job he would care to have, himself; the guards at the Karsite side were clearly nervous, and the ones here probably were as well. This was only the second time that he had seen a real Valdemaran up close, one of the Hellspawn themselves—

No, not Hellspawn. Her Holiness, the Son of the Sun, High Priest Solaris has said that was all a fiction created by corrupt priests. They are not Hellspawn, they never were. Just people, different from us, but people.

Hard to undo the thinking of a lifetime, though, and if it was hard for him, it must be incredibly difficult for people like the officers in the Army. How must that be, to go to sleep, only to wake up the next day and find that your demonic enemies had become, by Holiest decree, your allies? To learn that they were not demonic at all, and never had been?