"And there are," Firesong added smoothly, "many, many more mages in the Empire than the entire Alliance can currently supply. Again, that is a real fact. Herald Captain Kerowyn asked me to look at the section of her intelligence report that deals with magic. It is evident to me that much of Imperial infrastructure depends very heavily on mages. I would judge, from the descriptions in the report, that they use mages for communication, construction, and transportation, making their conventional supply-lines much different from what we would use. In layman's terms, I believe that all of their supplies come from deep within the Empire itself by means of Gates. If they can afford to use mages for tasks where we would use carts, workers, and messengers, what kind of offensive magics can they muster?"
"I'm not sure I want to think about it," someone muttered grimly, as shocked silence fell around the table.
Kerowyn is a good commander who does not shrink away from the truth, however unpleasant, Karal decided, and wrote exactly that down. She has a talent for stating baldly the things that no one else truly wants to consider.
Finally the Lord Patriarch cleared his throat, making no few of those sitting around the table start. "Well," he said, unsteadily, "What are our options, with such a force levied against us? It begins to look as if the only one we have is to pray!"
The Shin'a'in envoy looked at Firesong, and he nodded, deferring to her. She stood up, took a pointer from a page and went to the great map inlaid on the wall.
"The Shin'a'in and the Tayledras have agreed to establish safeholds in the west, in this line," she said, pointing out a line that began at the southern rim of Lake Evendim and continued down to the Dhorisha Plains. "We will hold a safe path of retreat at all times, just as we did during the war with Ancar. We can also receive some of your Hardornen refugees that are willing to take a chance on making new homes in the west, and we hope that this will take some of the strain from the resources of Valdemar."
She sat down again, and Firesong took up where she had left off. "I must admit to you all, however, that as reinforcements, both of our peoples are fairly useless. We are equipped to wage very small-scale battles at the best. The Shin'a'in excel as individual warriors, but they have no organization or structure above the Clan hunting party. The Tayledras have better organization among our scouts, but again, we field very small units. We can offer a place of retreat, we can offer some support, but as armies go—" his expression was rueful, "—we can't manage much that is going to be useful to you."
"What about mages?" The Guild representative called.
"Ah, mages." Firesong nodded. "First of all, the Shin'a'in do not have mages. However, the Kaled'a'in—that is an offshoot tribe of both our peoples—do practice magic, and the Star-Eyed has given them leave to use it up here, am I correct?" He glanced back at the gryphon called Treyvan, who chuckled.
"Betterrr sssay that Ssshe hasss given them theirrr marrrching ordersss," the gryphon said, with a glance over at the fellow who had expressed scorn over Vkandis' implied power. "Asss sssomeone elssse herrre pointed out, theme arrre sssome of usss who arrre usssed to hearrring dirrrectly from ourrr godsss."
"So, that's one group—and I have to admit that even I am not certain what these magic-users can and cannot do. They have been separated from us for a very long time, and casually use things that we had long considered lost arts. We, the Tayledras, are also prepared to strip the Vales of mages and bring them here. We will not endanger our Vales, but there are many projects that can wait a little longer while we aid you."
"White Winds, Blue Mountain, and any other school we can contact will be doing the same," the White Winds representative put in. Quenten, I think. A friend of Kerowyn. Karal noted that they appeared to be about the same age. "If the Empire moves this far west, we freelance mages cannot afford to stand by idly. The Empire will annex us, or destroy us. That has been their policy in the past, and it is what they are doing now in Hardorn."
Firesong nodded. "I did say that there is no way that we can even begin to equal the sheer number of mages that the Empire can bring to bear—and I still mean that. However, the fact that the Empire works in a different tradition from us can work against them as well. If we don't know what they can do, the reverse is true for them. Right now, absolutely the best thing we can concentrate on is to learn everything we can about the Empire and its mages."
"True, and we're working on that," Kerowyn replied, "but don't forget they'll be doing the same thing about us."
Karal was taking notes furiously, while fighting his wish to gawk at the rest of the table. Firesong was as flamboyant as the last time Karal had seen him, though this time his color of choice was scarlet with touches of bright blue; the Shin'a'in envoy was sleekly exotic, as quiet and deadly as one of her arrows.
Then there were the gryphons. Once again, hearing an intelligible, intelligent sentence emerge from those beaks gave him something of a start. If he had not seen the Firecat Hansa conferring with Solaris with his own eyes, he would have been even more startled—and inclined to suspect trickery, some kind of magic to make it look as if the "beast" was speaking.
Ulrich stood up, and all eyes went to him. "I am inclined to agree with the Herald Captain in principle," he said, carefully, "But there is another factor involved here. The Empire is enormous, very old, and has probably never met with serious opposition in a very long time. They are likely to be used to these favorable conditions. They may very well dismiss all of us as 'barbarians' and inconsequential. They may not pursue their own intelligence-gathering operations as vigorously as they should. We cannot count on this, of course—" he added, as Kerowyn looked ready to protest such hubris, "—but we should be watching for patterns that indicate this. In fact, I believe that we should pursue the notion of planting information that we are as disorganized on this side of the border as the poor Hardornens are, and as paralyzed with terror. If we see the attitude of complacence developing, we will then be poised to take instant advantage of it."
Kerowyn smiled broadly at that, and bowed a little in acknowledgment of Ulrich's cleverness. He returned the ironic little salute as he regained his seat.
"What about the mages of Valdemar?" Prince Daren asked into the silence.
Now it was Elspeth's turn, and she rose to her feet. "The obvious answer is that we should train as many, and as quickly, as we can—which we are doing. The second obvious answer is that we should also recruit as many freelance mages from the south as possible, just as we did during the last conflict with Ancar. The problem with that second obvious answer is that other than mages from the Kaled'a'in and Tayledras, and those coming from schools and teachers personally known to Quenten, we have to suspect that at least some of the mages we might recruit from the south are agents of the Empire. Most of the mages that Quenten knows and can vouch for are already up here. That leaves us with the first answer. We're training our own—but there are only so many of them."