Mercedes Lackey - Sun in Glory and Other Tales of Valdemar

"I suppose," Jeri brooded, "that's the only reason why you've never Gated in behind our lines with an army."

Karchanek shrugged. "Power, lack of familiarity with the place, and that there are very, very few Adepts. The Order as it was distrusted mages, and the more power they had, the less they were trusted. Those who manifested great power and demonstrated an ability to think for themselves often met with unfortunate accidents, or fell victim to the White Demons.

So it was said."

"And Ancar?" Jeri asked soberly.

"Could learn this, has he those who will teach him," Karchenek replied grimly. "Never doubt it. He , as were some of the worst of the Sun-priests of the past, is not limited in power by what he can channel naturally- he can, and has, and will, channel blood-magic, which has no limits other than the number of people that one can kill. Yet another reason why this alliance is so vital. Vital enough that I will remain here, whatever it costs me, hostage to the Son of the Sun's good behavior, although..."

He didn't have to finish that statement; Karchanek looked like a man haunted by his own personal set of demons. In a way, apparently he was. According to Kerowyn, who'd had mages in her Skybolts company that hadn't been able to bear what happened to them when they crossed into Valdemar, the reason why there were no real mages in this land was because they couldn't stand being here. The moment anyone worked real magic here-something happened. Something-a lot of somethings, evidently-swarmed over the mage and gathered around him, night and day. And stared at him.

Now that didn't sound too dreadful to Alberich until he'd had a chance to see what the experience was doing to Karchanek's nerves and thought about it himself. What would it be like to have dozens, perhaps hundreds of people around you all the time, never taking their eyes off you, glaring at you by light and dark, sleeping or waking? Nerve-racking, that was what it was. And when the creatures were invisible to everyone else?

There was no equivalent to the Queen's Own in Solaris' "court," but Karchanek was close-lifelong friend and supporter, powerful mage, on whom she depended for able advice.

That he pledged to remain as hostage was probably the o nly reason why, in the end, this plan had been agreed to. "And what do we do to keep you from spiriting yourself away?"

Selenay had asked sharply when he first made the proposition himself.

He had shrugged. "Whatever you please. Bind me, blindfold me, keep in me a darkened room, drug me if no other solution presents itself. Whatever makes you certain of me."

Selenay had taken him at his word. There was a small cup of some drug or other waiting in a page's hands for the moment when the Gate came down again. Karchanek would be drugged until the morning of the ceremony, then watched like a hawk until the moment when the Firecat would call him and use him reopen the Gate to Valdemar, this time in the full presence of every important person in Karse at the High Temple itself, and send Talia and her escort home. He didn't seem at all unhappy about that-

"-the truth?" he said to Jeri, when she asked him about that herself. "I will welcome it.

To sleep, oblivious to all the vrondi- eyes upon me! I could ask no greater boon, at this moment. They do not just watch, you know. They talk, at me sometimes, but mostly among themselves. It is not just the eyes upon me, it is the chatter, the droning babble that never stills and never ends, that I cannot understand." He shuddered, and Alberich saw with an easing of his worries that a faint expression of sympathy flitted over Selenay's face.

Sympathy-for a Karsite other than Alberich. A good omen, but one he didn't have time to contemplate. Already Karchanek approached the brickwork archway, and he had warned Alberich that not even a Firecat could maintain a Gate at this distance for too long. They would barely have time to get through it.

As a lowly Captain of the Border Guard, he had never actually seen any priestly magic being performed, other than the simple act of kindling fire on Vkandis' altar; he'd only heard the howls of the spectral creatures conjured to harry "witches and evildoers" through the night. He couldn't bear to watch it now. Perhaps one day, when he'd had a chance to become accustomed to the idea of magic being used for anything other than harm, but not now. Not when his nerves were singing with the need to act, and he feared that if he watched Karchanek, a man he would like to think of as a friend one day, he might see the Priest-Mage calling a demon...

So he busied himself with Kantor's tack, and when the signal came, he mounted in a rush, and drove through the Gate with his eyes closed, hard on Rolan's heels.

There was a long, long moment then of terrible cold, then bone-shaking nausea, and the horrible sensation that he was falling through a starless, endless, bottomless night. It seemed to last forever, but Kantor's steady presence in his mind held him, as it had held him during the long, slow agony of healing from his terrible burns, when Kantor had rescued him and brought him here, to safety and a new life

Then he was not here , anymore, but there -in Karse.

Sun blazed down upon him and the others, a sun fierce and kind at the same time.

They stood, their Companions' bridle bells chiming softly as they fidgeted, in the middle of a bone-white courtyard surrounded on all four sides by enclosing walls. Before them waited a cat, and a woman.

The cat was the size of a large dog, with a brick-red mask, ears, paws, and tail shading to a handsome cream on the body, and piercing blue eyes. A Firecat-

:Indeed I am,: said a voice in his mind with a touch of satisfied purr behind it. :My name is Hansa, and this, of course, is Solaris. Welcome home, Herald Alberich.:

"I second that sentiment," echoed the woman.

She had presence that entirely eclipsed her appearance. If Alberich had not already known that her eyes were a golden-brown subject to changing as her mood changed, and her hair a darker golden-brown, he would not have been able to tell anyone that if he turned around and took his eyes off her. Yes, the Firecat was impressive-any feline that came up to his knee would be impressive, much less one like Hansa. And the faint golden glow that surrounded each hair certainly didn't hurt.

But Solaris had that same golden glow about her. And a great deal more. Measuring by eye, she was certainly no taller than Selenay and much shorter than Alberich-but she somehow loomed larger than that.

"You, I do hope, Herald Talia are," she said in slow and deliberate Valdemaran to Talia, who had dismounted. She held out her hand, and Talia stepped forward and took it.

And both of them smiled identical, warm smiles that managed to humanize Solaris without diminishing her impressiveness by a whit. "And this the formidable Herald Dirk would be?"

she inquired with a slight lift of one eyebrow that somehow had the effect of making Dirk flush.

There were no servants, no lesser priests, there was no one but Solaris and Hansa-Hansa, who Solaris scooped up with an effort and held draped over her arms, for despite the Firecat's aplomb, he seemed exhausted. It was Solaris who escorted them to their rooms, indicating with a simple nod of her head that the Companions should come also. She brought them down quiet, white corridors lit from above by skylights and ornamented at intervals with great Sun-In-Glory Disks on walls and inlaid in the floors.

The rooms were simple, probably priests' quarters; Dirk and Talia shared one, with Alberich in the next-and most interesting, a kind of rough box-stall hock-deep in fresh straw took up about half of each of the rooms. Kantor went directly to his with a shake of his head; after a long and searching look at their Chosen, Rolan and Dirk's little mare went to theirs.