Storm Warning by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online Page A

although the horses they had requisitioned might look more impressive than little Trenor. They were gentlemen for the most part, and were certainly above choosing their own mounts—assuming any of them could tell a spavined breakdown from a sweet little palfrey like this one. And none of them would have stooped to asking for his advice. Doubtless, they had sent servants down to the stables, with orders to select beasts “suited to their station.” Well, they paid the penalty of pride in their rumps, every time they rode, for the rest of the horses in the stables were a collection of sorry misfits. Most of them were showy pieces, huge creatures with long manes and tails, rejected from some noble warrior’s string. Yes, they were lovely to look at, shiny and high-stepping, but they had iron mouths, bad tempers, or gaits that were pure torture to sit.
    Not that all these traits were incurable. Karal could have settled an iron mouth or a bad temper quickly enough—but why should he, when his fellow novices neither asked for his help nor deserved it? Let the others suffer; Sunlord knew they’d made him suffer in other ways all through his training.
    But that was behind him now. By the time he completed this assignment as his mentor’s secretary, he would be a full Priest of Vkandis, and the equal of anyone in Karse save the Son of the Sun herself. No one could deny him that rank, no matter what his antecedents were.
    He squinted up at the sun in the cloudless sky above. We are all equal in Vkandis’ Light, he reminded himself. Oh, surely, and cows will take to the air and soar like falcons any day now!
    Trenor tried to dance, this time with impatience, but Karal held him steady, and soothed him with a wordless croon. How long had it been since he’d seen the human version of this fidgeting bundle of nerves? Three years? No, it was only two.
    But if this Valdemaran escort doesn’t show up, he may be grown before we ever see home again!
    It was an exaggeration, of course, but it felt as if he had been standing here for days beneath the carefully dispassionate gaze of these two young men in their blue and silver uniforms. He and Ulrich waited on a stretch of newly-cut road that was only a few leagues long, one of the tangible evidences of peace with Valdemar. These bits of roadway linked Karse and its former enemy, bridging the distance from a Karsite road to a Valdemaran one, and giving real traffic a place to cross. On the Karsite side was a gatehouse and a pair of guards where the old road joined the new one. On the Valdemaran side were facilities and guards nearly identical to their counterparts at the Karsite border-crossing behind him, except for the color and cut of the uniforms. The Valdemaran version seemed rather severe to Karal, accustomed as he was to the flowing scarlet and gold of the Karsite regulars, with the embroidered sashes of rank, feathered turbans, and brocaded vests. Plain tunics, plain breeches, only the tiniest bit of silver trim and braid ... these men might have been mistaken for someone’s lowest-rank servant, a stable sweeper or horseboy.
    Like I was ... even Father dressed more handsomely than these men do.
    Karal’s father had never worn such unadorned clothing in Karal’s memory; the Chief Stableman of the Rising Sun Inn could boast beautifully embroidered garments from the hands of his loving wife and daughters. His pay might be meager enough, but he could put on a show fit to match anyone of his own station and even a little above. The clothing Karal had worn before the Sun-priests came for him had been plain enough, but he had been a stable sweeper, and anyway, he had only been nine. Not nearly a man, and in no way needing to prove his worth the way a man did.
    I wish that there was some shade here. The sun that was so kind in the mountains, countering the chill of the breezes, was a burden here. His dark robes soaked it up and released none of the heat. But the situation was too new,