Storm Warning - Mercedes Lackey [128]
There was an initial report on Valdemar from his tame scholars, hardly more than a page or two, lying in the middle of the dark wooden expanse of his desk. He picked it up without sitting down and scanned it over. He didn’t really need to—he’d read the report several times already—but it gave him the feeling that he was actually doing something to pick it up and read the words.
The gist of it was that some centuries ago, a minor Baron of a conquered land within the Empire named “Valdemar” reacted to the abuses of power by his Imperial overlord in a rather drastic fashion. Rather than bringing his complaints to the Emperor, he had assembled all of his followers in the dead of winter when communications were well-nigh impossible, and instructed them to pack up everything they wanted to hold onto. Valdemar was a mage, and so was his wife; between them, they managed to find and silence all the spies in their own Court. Then Valdemar, his underlings, their servants and retainers right down to the last peasant child, all fled with everything they could carry. At last report, they had gone into the west, the dangerous west. Valdemar had probably known that the Empire would be reluctant to pursue them in that direction. Presumably his quest for some land remote enough that he need no longer worry about the Empire finding him bore fruit. The coincidence of names seemed far too much to be anything else, and according to the scholars, this present “Kingdom of Valdemar” bore the stamp of that original Baron Valdemar’s overly-idealistic worldview.
That was all simple enough, and it could account for the animosity of the current leaders of Valdemar toward the Empire of which they should know very little. If they, in their turn, had a tradition of “fear the Empire,” they would react with hostility to the first appearance of Imperial troops anywhere near their borders.
That much was predictable. What was not predictable was the shape that Baron Valdemar’s idealism had taken. Where in the names of the forty little gods did this cult of
white-clad riders come from? There was nothing like them inside the Empire or outside of it! And what were their horses? His mages all swore to a man that they were something more than mere horseflesh, but they could not tell him what they were, only what they weren’t. How powerful were the beasts? No one could tell him. What was their function? No one could tell him that, either. There was nothing really written down, only some legend that they were a gift of some unspecified gods. Were they “familiars,” as some hedge-wizards used? Were they conjured up out of the Etherial Plane? No one could tell him. Nor had the agent unearthed anything; the riders themselves, when asked directly, would only smile and say that this was something only another rider would understand.
That was hardly helpful.
I never liked the idea of employing an artist as an agent, he thought with distaste. When they aren’t unreliable, they’re ineffectual.
Not that he’d had any choice; the agent was an inheritance from his predecessor, and there hadn’t been time or opportunity to get another in place.
White riders and horses were bad enough, but worse had somehow occurred before Ancar took himself out in some kind of insane battle with an unknown mage or mages.
Valdemar had somehow managed to patch up a conflict going back generations with their traditional enemy, Karse. And how they had managed to make an ally of that stiff-necked, parochial bitch Solaris was completely beyond him! He wouldn’t have thought the so-called Son of the Sun would ally herself with anyone, much less with an ages-old enemy!
And where had all the rest of Valdemar’s bizarre allies come from? He would hardly have credited descriptions, if he had not seen the sketches! Shin’a’in he had heard of, as a vague legend, but what were Hawkbrothers? And who could believe in talking gryphons? Gryphons were creatures straight out of legend, and that is where they should, in a rational