“How bad is it?” I asked.
“Exceedingly.” Her tone was grave; I shared her chill. “Dharbek lies snowbound. The storm wrecked shipping the lengths of the Slammerkin and the Treppanek, both; also down the coasts. Roads are blocked, and whole keeps, towns, are cut off. There has never been such a winter.”
I said, “I know,” and she gestured apology, murmuring, “Forgive me, Daviot. Of course you’d know.”
I asked her, “Magic? Is it the Sky Lords’ doing?”
Her face was answer enough, the words redundant. “Durbrecht fears it so,” she said, “and Kherbryn agrees. We cannot understand how, but there seems no other explanation.”
I raised my cup; drained it. Yanydd cursed, and silently I joined him. Almost, I told them all I knew. I thought that if the Sky Lords now commanded the elements themselves, if the Kho’rabi wizards sent tempests and blizzards against us, they must surely soon mount the Great Coming. I thought that every scrap of information should likely be of use; and then that all my reasons for holding back pertained still. It was the Changed dug Mhorvyn clear; it was the Changed risked the causeway to fetch wood for our fires. Did ships venture out, it would be Changed crewed them; it would be Changed toiled to open the roads. To tell of those few I had seen in alliance with the Kho’rabi was surely to betray the many, to bring down suffering on the innocent. Urt should suffer, and Lan; poor cowed Thom, and Pele and her children. Betrayal was balanced by betrayal-of the Changed, or perhaps of my own Trueman kind. I was caught between, trapped by my own instinctive decision to hold my tongue. I felt wretched: I hid my expression, reaching for the wine jug.
“We cannot believe they’ll attack yet.” I set the jug aside, composing myself as Laena spoke again. “Not in such weather.”
She shrugged, looking to Yanydd. The aeldor said, “This must hamper them no less than us. It makes no sense to invade a land of blocked roads. How should they fight, how travel?”
“They’ve their skyboats,” I said. “Shall they need roads?”
“They must!” Yanydd’s fist set his cup to bouncing. “Shall they send skyboats against every keep? Can they have so vast a fleet? Even do they concentrate their attacks on the great holds-seize Kherbryn and Durbrecht, even-still there should be sufficient lesser holdings to fight them. No, it’s my belief they must look to establish bridgeheads, do they plan real conquest. And what use a snowbound bridgehead?”
He fell silent, righting his spilled cup. I suspected his fierce words were a defiance based on hope, rather than genuine belief.
Laena said, “Yanydd believes they seek to grind us down. To disrupt the land and then send an armada against us.”
“And you?” I asked, meaning both her and the Sorcerous College.
“That likely Yanydd’s correct,” she replied. “That they shall send such weather against us as will blight our crops and wreck our ships-leave all Dharbek in chaos. Then that they shall end their sending and mount the Great Coming.”
I thought a moment on all I had learned in Durbrecht of military strategy, of past campaigns. None had been fought in winter, not the great battles. The transportation of armies was too difficult in winter. We Dhar fought our battles under the sun. Did the Ahn? Was winter truly an encumbrance to the Sky Lords? Yanydd’s prognostication made sense. The storm that had raged, the snow that followed, did not. None of this made sense, save that terrible powers were brought against us. I said, “Then we’ve time yet, be you right.”
“Yes.” Laena nodded. “But how much, we cannot know. Do they command the very elements, then this snow may cease as swift as it began.”
“Durbrecht’s no better notion?” I asked.
“We suspect …” She paused, seeming a moment lost. Then: “We suspect that their magic cannot entirely dominate the seasons. That they must bend nature to their will, shaping it, rather than controlling it utterly. Therefore, it seems unlikely they shall attack before spring.”
I glanced again at the window, wondering how long that season should be in coming.
“We looked to fight them,” Yanydd said, “sooner or later. It comes sooner.”
I thought that Laena whispered, “Too soon,” but her head was bowed, and I could not be sure. I said, “So I am to leave as soon I may. Where do I go?”
The commur-mage looked up, meeting my eyes. “East, around the coast,” she said. “Then north, to Durbrecht.”
I had not dared hope I might see my home again so soon; I had not at all thought to see it in such circumstances. I said, “And my commission? Do I say aught of all this?”
“Yes.” Laena ducked her head. “The Lord Protector deems it timely the people know what they face, that they be full ready. Durbrecht commands you tell brave stories, that you embolden the people. And learn all you may of their mood. Do you find any place unready, you are to report from the next sound keep. You are to hold nothing back.”
You are to hold nothing back. Almost, I laughed at the irony of it; almost, I wept. I only nodded and said gravely, “Yes, so I shall.”
As dusk fell that night-which was then merely a darkening of the white, a transposition of faint day’s light by silvery night’s-I told Lan I must soon depart, and why.
He nodded as he stoked my fire. “I think that shall be a hard journey,” he said. “But you’ll see your home again, at least.”
“It shall be no great homecoming,” I returned. “Not with such grim news.”
He added a log to the blaze and turned to face me. “At least you’ve the chance, Daviot.”
I was immediately chastened: Lan, as a Changed, would never have that privilege. Gently, I asked him, “Where are you from, Lan?”
“My parents served Kembry Keep,” he said. “I was born there. I came here when I was ten years.”
“Would you go back?” I asked.
He studied me a moment, his expression enigmatic. Then he shrugged and said, “One keep is much as another to we Changed. Lord Yanydd is kinder than the aeldor of Kembry, but otherwise there’s little difference.”
“But your parents,” I said. “Would you not see them again, were it possible?”
“It’s not,” he said. “I cannot travel as do you, free. Why dwell on the impossible?”
His tone was fatalistic, and I could not discern any regret in his expression or stance. I frowned: I spent much time dwelling on the seemingly impossible. I pondered the possibility of peace with the Sky Lords, I thought on the condition of the Changed, I wondered about the dragons of legend. It seemed to me that dreams were necessary. I said as much to Lan.
He smiled then and said, “Perhaps that is a difference between us, Daviot. We Changed have not the same feelings for family and past as you Truemen. Our lot is different-perhaps dreams should only bring us pain.”
“You’ve no feelings for your family?” I asked him.
“I think not as you do,” he answered. “Magic made us from the beasts, and beasts have few feelings for their sires, eh?”
“But you are not beasts,” I cried. “Don’t name yourself an animal!”
“I don’t,” he said gently. “But neither do I claim the same affection for kin and hearth as Truemen.”
I nodded, accepting. I thought perhaps I grew so ardent in my feelings for the Changed that I began to think them mirrors to my image. But they were not-as Lan pointed out, they were descended from animals, and though they were now (of this I should not be dissuaded) become far more than their progenitors, still they lived their lives to a different rhythm than I and my kind. It did not render them inferior, only different.
“But dreams,” I said. “Surely you have dreams?”
“Yes,” he allowed me, “but they are our dreams, and not like yours, I think.”
“Tell me,” I asked. “What are they?”
He shook his head, his expression veiled. “We hold our dreams private, Daviot.”
His voice was quiet, but in it I heard steel. I thought a moment to press him, and then that such as he had little enough privacy I should presume to intrude on those small areas that were his alone; not if I thought to name myself his friend. I said, “As you wish,” and he smiled again, nodding his gratitude.
“Perhaps one day you shall know them,” he said.
I said, “That should be an honor, Lan.”