Storm Warning - Mercedes Lackey [127]
And once again, if the perpetrator was some shiftless ne’er-do-well, who did not have a position, he would find himself in a labor camp, building the roads and the aqueducts, with his pay supplying the needs of the child for which he was responsible. And that responsibility was brought home to him with every stone he set or ditch he dug.
And if a perpetrator were foolish enough to rape again—then he underwent a series of punishments both physical and magical that would leave him outwardly intact but completely unable to repeat his act.
Tremane brooded as lightning flashed outside the window. Compared to life under Ancar, all this should have been paradisiacal. So why the revolt and resistance now?
Perhaps Ancar had not been allowed to operate freely long enough. There may still be enough people alive who recall the halcyon days of his father’s rule. They may be the ones behind the resistance.
He grimaced. Too bad they didn’t have the good taste to die with Ancar’s father and spare the Empire all this work!
He would have to revise his plans to include that possibility, though. Somehow, he was going to have to find a way to counter their influence.
Perhaps if I fortify and protect select cities, and bring in the Police and the builders ... no matter how golden the old times are said to be, the reality of Imperial rule will be right in front of these barbarians as an example. With Imperial cities prospering, and rebellious holdings barely holding on, the equation should be obvious even to a simpleton.
But what about Valdemar? The more he looked at it, the more certain he became that they were as much behind the resistance as these putative hangovers from an earlier time. But what could he do about them, when he knew next to nothing about them?
Then he gave himself a purely mental shake. Stupid. I may know nothing now, and it may be very difficult to get current information out, but I have other sources of information. He was a great believer in history; he had always felt that knowing what someone had done in the past, whether that “someone” was a nation or an individual, made it possible to predict what that someone might do in the future.
And I have an entire monastery full of scholars and researchers with me—not to mention my personal library. I can set them the task of finding out where these Valdemarens came from in the first place, and what they have done in their own past.
There was one rather odd and disquieting thing, however, that might concern the land of Valdemar. In all of the histories of the Empire, from the time of the first Emperor and before, the West was painted as a place of ill-omen. “There is a danger in the West,” ran the warning, without any particular danger specified.
That was one reason why the Empire had concentrated its efforts on its eastern borders, taking the boundary of the Empire all the way to the Salten Sea. Then they had expanded northward until they reached lands so cold they were not worth bothering with, then south until they were stopped by another stable Empire that predated even the Iron Throne. Only then, in Charliss’ reign, had the Emperor turned his eyes westward and begun his campaign to weaken Hardorn from within.
Tremane turned away from the window and walked back into his study in silence. The light from his magelamp on the desk was steady and clear, quite enough to give the feeling that no storm would ever penetrate these stone walls