An Autumn War(11)

The path beneath the colonnade led into a maze of hallways as old as Galt itself. The air seemed ancient, thick and dusty and close with the breath of men generations dead. The secretary led Balasar up a stone stairway worn treacherously smooth by a river of footsteps to a wide door of dark and carved wood. Balasar scratched on it, and a booming voice called him in.

The meeting room was wide and long, with a glassed-in terrace that looked out over the city and shelves lining the walls with books and rolled maps. Low leather couches squatted by an iron fireplace, a low rosewood table between them with dried fruits and glass flutes ready for wine. And standing at the terrace's center looking out over the city, the Lord Convocate, a great gray bear of a man.

Balasar closed the door behind him and walked over to the man's side. Acton spilled out before them-smoke and grime, broad avenues where steam wagons chuffed their slow way through the city taking on passengers for a half-copper a ride laced with lanes so narrow a man's shoulders could touch the walls on either side. For a moment, Balasar recalled the ruins in the desert, placing the memory over the view hefore him. Reminding himself again of the stakes he played for.

"I've been riding herd on the Council since you gave your report. They aren't happy," the Lord Convocatc said. "The High Council doesn't look favorably on men of ... what should I call it? Profound initiative? None of them had any idea you'd gone so far. Not even your father. It was impolitic."

"I'm not a man of politics."

The Lord Convocate laughed.

"You've led an army on campaign," he said. "If you didn't understand something of how to manage men, you'd be feeding some Westland tree by now."

Balasar shrugged. It wasn't what he'd meant to do; it was the monment to come across as controlled, loyal, reliable as stone, and here he was shrugging like a petulant schoolboy. He forced himself to smile.

"I suppose you're right," he said.

"But you know they would have refused you."

"Know is a strong word. Suspected."

"Feared?"

"perhaps."

"Fourteen cities in a single season. It can't be done, Balasar. Uther Redcape couldn't have done it."

"tither was fighting in Eddensea," Balasar said. "They have walls around cities in Eddensea. They have armies. The Khaiem haven't got anything but the andat."

""I'he andat suffice."

"Only if they have them."

"Ah. Yes. That's the center of the question, isn't it? Your grand plan to do away with all the andat at a single blow. I have to confess, I don't think I quite follow how you expect this to work. You have one of these poets here, ready to work with us. Wouldn't it be better to capture one of these andat for ourselves?"

"We will be. FreedomFrom-Bondage should be one of the simplest andat to capture. It's never been done, so there's no worry about coming too near what's been tried before. The binding has been discussed literally for centuries. I've found books of commentary and analysis dating back to the First Empire ..."

"All of it exploring exactly why it can't be done, yes?" The Lord Convocate's voice had gone as gentle and sympathetic as that of a medic trying to lead a man to realize his own dementia. It was a ploy. The old man wanted to see whether Balasar would lose his temper, so instead he smiled.

""That depends on what you mean by impossible."

The Lord Convocate nodded and stepped to the windows, his hands clasped behind his hack. Balasar waited for three breaths, four. The impulse to shake the old man, to shout that every day was precious and the price of failure horrible beyond contemplation, rose in him and fell. This was the battle now, and as important as any of those to come.

"So," the Lord Convocate said, turning. "Explain to me how 'annot means can.

Balasar gestured toward the couches. They sat, leather creaking beneath them.

""I'he andat are ideas translated into forms that include volition," Balasar said. "A poet who's bound something like, for example, WoodUpon-Water gains control over the expression of that thought in the world. He could raise a sunken vessel up or sink all the ships on the sea with a thought, if he wished it. The time required to create the binding is measured in years. If it succeeds, the poet's life work is to hold the thing here in the world and train someone to take it from him when he grows old or infirm."

"You're telling me what I know," the old man said, but Balasar raised a hand, stopping him.

"I'm telling you what they mean when they say impossible. They mean that FreedomFrom-Bondage can't be held. "There is no way to control something that is the essential nature and definition of the uncontrolled. But they make no distinction between being invoked and being maintained."