Free One Good Knight by Mercedes Lackey Page A

entirely, and elude customs officials tobring in items that had been banned. But it seemed that to an increasing extent, such scofflaws had found themselves facing storm and wreck, almost as if some divine hand was at work. Some, when not wrecked, found themselves driven into port before a storm, willing or not.
    But there was something very troubling about those lists of wrecked ships, because there was another trend for which Andie truly could not find any sensible reason.
    Not only were there more wrecks, but there were more wrecks every year from merchants and countries that had never traded out of Ethanos. Places where the sunken ships gave up corpses that had dark brown, black or yellow skin, where the cargos were things that had never passed through any market in Acadia, where no Acadian but a Sophont could read the lettering on the barrels and bales, and only then by bespelling the letters into something recognizable.
    Where were they coming from? When Andie sorted through older and older records, she saw that such a prodigy would occur now and again, once every ten or twenty years at most for the entire length of the Acadian shoreline, and be talked about by the scavengers who found it for a generation or more.
    Not now. Now the exotic ships were washing up once a month in the stormy season, as if some inimical hand had dragged them off course and then thrown them onto Acadian rocks. And it made nosense. This was like finding strawberries in winter, or a gryphon cub among the kittens in a farmhouse litter. Those vessels should not have been anywhere near Acadia—yet there they were, coming to grief, spilling their goods out onto Acadian shores.
    More wrecks—wrecks from foreign lands…Andie had a hunch, and looked in still another set of records, to discover that, yes, the storms of the storm season were getting worse, stronger, lasting longer, and the season beginning earlier and ending later. Away from Ethanos, fisherfolk were suffering, unable to put to sea to make their winter catches, and farmers were suffering, too, as their growing season shortened. So although prosperity was coming to Acadia as a whole in the form of treasure, it was passing the people who formed the backbone of Acadia, the coastal farmers and fisherfolk.
    She closed that book and sat staring into space for a moment. A horrible thought dawned on her.
    What if the storms are being sent?
    It was true that the wrecks were bringing a certain amount of prosperity to Acadia, but only to a few. The rest were suffering. Smaller harvests meant less to eat; so far, the difference hadn’t shown up in the marketplace that she knew of, but the area around Ethanos seemed free of these prodigal storms. The rest of the coastline was not doing as well. And if there was one thing that Andie saw in history, it was that if you wanted to bring a country to its knees, you began by starving it.
    Though, it might not be Acadia that was the target here. It could be some other land, whose merchants were being driven off course, whose cargos were being lost. Acadia could be both the unwitting victim of and benefactor from someone else’s quarrels.
    So, it was a theory. The question was, could it be done, or was all this some Godmother tale she was frightening herself with? Can storms be sent? Can you perform some magic to bring them early, make them stronger and send them where they wouldn’t ordinarily go?
    Only one person in the Palace would know.
    Not long ago, she would have gone running down to Balan’s workshop herself. Now, with a sigh, she rang a little bell on her desk, and a servant appeared.
    â€œDo you know where Sophont Balan lodges?” she asked the boy.
    He nodded. Well, a boy would. Girls, many of them, at any rate tended to avoid the area of the Sophont’s quarters because of the odd smells, sounds and occasional sights, and a fear that some thing would jump out and bite them. Boys, on the other hand, tended to