by Karen Miller
Pother Kerril’s assistant jumped. “Deenie?”
She bit her lip. Ulys was a nice enough young woman, but she was hardly robust. Except she’s all I’ve got, so she’ll have to do. Besides, Da’s not heavy. Not any more. “Ulys, I need your help.”
Ulys’s green eyes were bright with fear. “Of course.”
A fresh battering of hail struck Da’s chamber window. The storm was doing its best to break in. “Ulys, you and Charis get Da downstairs and outside. Wrap him in all his blankets and carry him, shoulders and ankles. Do it now, quickly. Mama and I will be right behind you.”
“Deenie, your father’s not well,” Mama protested, as Charis and the novice pother leapt to the bed. “He can’t be bustled about like this! Really, you mustn’t upset him so. It’s a storm, it will pass like all the rest—”
Whatever was in that wretched posset her mother had taken, clearly it had fuddled her good and proper. “No, Mama,” she said. “It won’t.”
“All right,” Mama said, uncertain. “If you’re sure.”
“We’ve got him, Deenie,” said Charis, holding tight to Da’s blanketed ankles. Anchored to his shoulders, Pother Ulys nodded her support.
“Then go!” she snapped. “Fast as you can. Don’t wait for us—and make sure to get yourselves well away from the Tower, and anything else that might fall.”
“But Deenie—” Crumpled with worry, Charis stared at her. “The hail, and the lightning—”
“Won’t kill us half as dead as this Tower coming down on our heads!” Clapping her hands, she conjured scores of glimfire balls into the spiral staircase and the foyer so there’d be no chance of Charis and Ulys missing a step and tumbling with Da into a disaster of broken bones. “Now go!”
“We’re going, we’re going,” said Charis. “Deenie—”
Far beneath her feet, she felt the earth groaning. “Don’t worry, we’re right behind you,” she said, trying to smile. Trying not to show Charis the pain and the fear. “Hurry.”
Charis pulled a face. “You hurry.”
Another deep groaning in the earth. Forcing herself not to groan with it, turning away from Charis and Ulys hurrying Da from his room, Deenie took her mother’s hands and tugged.
“Come on, Mama. We have to get downstairs.”
“Wait,” said Mama. “Deenie, you wait. I’m your mother, you’re not to boss me.” She pulled her hands free. “Now help me find dry clothes for your father. What use is there saving him from a tremor so he can die of an ague?”
There wasn’t any, only—“Mama, please—”
But posset or no posset, Mama was still a slumskumbledy wench. “No, Deenie! This will take but a moment!”
It took more than a cat to drive her mother where she wouldn’t go. “All right, all right,” she muttered. “Only please, let’s hurry!”
Mama flung open Da’s garderobe doors and began hunting through his shirts and trews and weskits, clothes he’d not worn for months as he lay ailing in bed.
“Don’t stand there dithering, Deenie!” she said. “Hold out your arms!”
Sick with nerves, Deenie did as she was told. Every instinct she possessed was screaming run—run—run— but she couldn’t drag her mother out of the chamber, could she, and she wasn’t about to leave her behind.
Mama pulled out two shirts and two pairs of woollen trews, muttering under her breath. She pulled Da’s best winter coat off its hook and added it to the pile. She found woollen socks and his favourite boots.
“Mama, that’s enough, isn’t it?” she said, sagging under the weight of so much wool when she was already burdened with the satchel. “Mama, please, we have to go!”
Flapping a hand at her, Mama kept hunting through the garderobe. “Yes—yes—perhaps one more shirt—”
For the first time since childhood, Deenie stamped her foot. “No, Mama!” A fresh groaning in the earth, and a swiftly rising terror. “Mama, stop treating me like a spratling! Stop being stupid! I’m a mage and I’m telling you there’s a tremor coming, a bad one!”
Shocked, her mother turned. “Deenie! Don’t you—”
A lightning crack so sharp and loud it hurt the ears—a deafening crash of thunder and hard on their heels, a dreadful, rolling growl.
Dropping Da’s clothes, Deenie grabbed her mother by the wrist. “Run, Mama, run!”
Protesting Da’s abandoned clothes, Mama ran with her. She didn’t have a choice—it was run or be dragged.
The Tower’s blue stone bones were shuddering, the earth’s agitation rising swiftly to its surface. Feeling the roil of releasing power, feeling the kingdom’s long-buried, furious anguish, Deenie released her mother’s wrist and shoved her through the main apartment door, out onto the landing beside the staircase. The balls of glimfire she’d conjured sputtered and sparked and winked.
“Hurry, Mama!” she said, sight blurring. The earth’s pain was in her, so deep and hot she was nearly sick. “Don’t fratch, I’m right behind you!”
And she was, for the first four steps. But then she had to stop, she had to snatch hold of the staircase railing, so nauseous and dizzy she nearly lost her footing.
A moment, a moment, I only need a moment—
“Deenie?” Mama shouted, out of sight now beyond the first spiral twist.
“I’m coming, Mama! Don’t stop, I’m right behind you!”
But as she let go of the railing she heard a grinding run through the Tower’s thick stone walls. Felt it grind through her own bones, so she had to cry out. Then, with a sparking sizzle, every conjured ball of glimfire died—and the groaning, grinding Tower was plunged into the dark.
And the dark was shattered by a terrible scream.
“Mama!” she shouted, and flung herself down the staircase, blinded anew by fresh terror and a choking wave of dread.
Another grinding groan shuddered upwards from the earth, shuddered through the Tower and through her bones and through her blood. She felt her home ripple around her. Heard things tip and fall and smash. Glass. Ceramic vases. Bookcases. Plates. Hands pressed to the unsteady wall, groping her way downwards to the foyer, her belly heaving, bile scalding her throat, Deenie tried to call out. Had to try twice. Tried to conjure fresh glimfire, but the magic wouldn’t catch.
“Mama. Mama,” she croaked, feeling her heels slide on each shaking stair tread. Feeling her heart painfully battering her chest. “Mama!”
She fell over her mother’s motionless body at the foot of the staircase.
No time to cry out, or cry, or hold her. Time only to grab her wrists and haul her like a sack of flour across the foyer floor, which was shuddering and shivering and beginning to buckle. The foyer doors stood wide open, the sound of thunder bouncing off the circular wall, rain and hail blowing in, pooling and puddling. The lightning was still crimson, cracking in time with her heart.
Half-witless with the earth’s pain she reached the doorway, dropped her mother’s wrists and leaned into the storm. “Charis!” she screamed. “Charis!”
But Charis couldn’t hear her.
I can’t do this. I can’t. I’m not strong enough. I’m a mouse.
Like a pond struck by a thrown rock, Lur’s suffering earth rippled. The Tower swayed. Roof tiles slithered and smashed on the sandstone steps. A whip crack of lightning, high and hard and loud, very close, and the foyer lit up with eerie bright red light.
“Deenie! Deenie!”
She looked up from sheltering her mother, and there in the open doorway was Charis, soaked to the skin. She heard herself sob once, and then she strangled her grief-stricken panic.
“Help me, Charis! Quickly!”
Pummelled by rain and hail she and Charis half-carried, half-dragged Mama out of the foyer, down the Tower’s juddering steps and across the forecourt’s shivering gravel to the mouth of the carriageway, where Pother Ulys waited with Da.
“Help me, Ulys,” she said, her teeth chattering, as she lowered her mother to the ground beside Da. “Mama fell
down the stairs.”
“Down the stairs?” Running with water, the pother pushed her aside and knelt beside Mama. “How many?”
“I don’t know. It was dark, I couldn’t see.” Her voice broke. The hard rain drummed her skin, ran like tears down her cold face. “Is she all right?”
Pother Ulys hesitated. “It’s so dark. I can’t see.”
“You don’t have to see!” she retorted. “You’re a pother. You heal people, so heal her!”
The muddy ground beneath them shuddered. Deenie doubled over, Lur’s pain driving through her. She felt Charis’s arm slip hard around her shoulders, holding. Another rippling rumble. More thunder. More crimson lightning, crack crack crack crack. The rain kept pouring, but mercifully there wasn’t any hail.
“Ulys!” she said, shouting over the storm. “What’s amiss with her?”
Another flash of lightning. It showed her Ulys’s stricken face. “Deenie—I’m so sorry. She’s—she’s dead.”
Dead? Mama was dead? No, no, no. That can’t be right. Even as she heard Charis sob, felt Charis’s arm close around her more tightly, she reached down and caught the pother’s robe in fisting fingers. “You’re wrong. You’re just a novice. What do you know?”
“I’m sorry,” Ulys said again. “Her neck’s broken.”
Mama’s dead. Mama’s dead.
The words bruised her like chunks of hail, tore through her like a tremor, pulling her apart. She could feel a howl building deep in her chest, pushing up, pushing up, trying to find a way out.
“—sorry, Deenie, I’m so sorry, Deenie, Deenie, it’ll be all right. Deenie, I’m here.”
And that was Charis, gabbling. The words rolled off her like the rain.
“Da?” she heard herself say. “What about Da?”
“He’s still breathing,” said Ulys. “He’s soaked through, but he’s alive.”
Da’s alive and Mama’s dead. Oh, what will he say when he wakes to that?
Another shudder in the earth. Another. Another. The third one sent them sprawling, the solid ground turned malleable, rippling like a blanket shaken by angry hands. Somewhere close by the sound of large trees ripping free of the earth and falling. Breaking.
“Deenie!” shrieked Charis, terrified in the dark. “Deenie, what’s happening?”
Tumbled across her mother’s still, unbreathing body, Deenie gasped. The ground was shaking. No, the world was shaking. The rain and lightning stopped, abruptly, and there was only the tremor, building and building, like a giant gathering itself to roar its rage at the dark.
“Deenie?” said Charis, breaking the terrible silence. “Deenie?”
“Hold on,” she whispered, the sickness surging through her in hot waves. “Hold on… hold on… it’s coming…”
Pother Ulys was weeping, enormous hiccupping gulps she tried to strangle in her throat as the rain-soaked carriageway bumped and buckled beneath them.
Deenie groped through the darkness for the pother’s cold hand. Groped for Charis’s too, and held on tight to both. Somehow the lack of light made everything worse. If she was going to die, she wanted a last look at Mama’s face. A last chance to kiss her father goodbye.
I’m sorry, Rafe. I’m sorry. I did want to save you. I just didn’t know how. I didn’t—
The tremor struck them like a blow from a mad blacksmith’s hammer.
Out in the open, nowhere to run and hide, they rolled and bounced and bruised on the ground. Cracked heads. Bit lips and bit tongues. The small pains were welcome, because that meant they weren’t dead.
Stone by stone by window by tile, the Tower broke apart and crashed to the ground.
Hearing it, Deenie felt herself break. Heard herself sob. Expected any moment to feel the earth tear wide and take her, swallow her, grind her to pulp. Another series of crashes. Terrified animal screams, cut short. The stables. The stables were smashing. Da’s pride and joy, once, his second home. His great love. The horses. Dead or dying now, like Lur.
Stay asleep, Da. Don’t wake up. You don’t want to see this.
In the distance, still more crashing. What was that, then? The palace? Was the palace falling too? Was their whole world about to fall?
Charis was right. This is the end.
The earth’s pain was her pain, ripping its way through her defenceless, vulnerable flesh. It showed no signs of easing, and neither did the earth’s fury. Either she’d live through the brutal tremors or she’d die. Understanding that left her oddly calm, even as she whimpered at the flames teasing her bones.
I wish you were here, Rafe. You’d know what to do.
Poor Lur. Poor ruined kingdom. All because of Morg. Because of Barl. All because the Doranen had come here with their satchels full of trouble.
You were right not to trust them, Da. This is all their fault.
The pain in her eased so slowly for a moment she was sure she imagined it. But then Charis, huddled beside her, shivering, snuffled softly and raised her head.
“Is that it? Is it over?”
And she realised the earth had stopped shaking.
“I think so,” whispered Pother Ulys. “Barl’s tits, I hope so.”
The unexpected crudity made her laugh. “Yes. It is.”
They sat up. Holding her breath, Deenie summoned glimfire and this time the magic caught. The small, bobbing sphere showed her Charis, muddy and tear-stained. Showed her Ulys, white as milk. Showed her Da, most of him sheltered beneath his blankets, eyes randomly shifting beneath his eyelids.
Showed her Mama, deathly still.
Charis was trembling. “Oh, Deenie.”
“I truly am sorry,” said Pother Ulys, subdued. “If it helps, it would have been… quick.”
Quick. Slow. What did it matter? Mama was dead. Deenie tugged off her coin satchel, letting it thud to the muddy ground, then struggled out of her soaking wet leather jacket and laid it over the waxen face of the woman who’d borne her, and loved her, and been her rock in the world. The earth’s pain had scoured her hollow and numb. She’d feel this dreadful loss. She’d have to feel it. She just didn’t know when, or how.
“I wonder what time it is,” she said, folding her arms tightly. “I wonder what’s happened down in the city.”
Ulys glanced up from checking on Da. “I should maybe go and see. There are likely many people hurt. They’ll need all the pothers they can get.”
Deenie stared. “And leave Da? You can’t.”
“Deenie…” Ulys sighed. “There’s nothing I can do for him. Not like this. Besides, as far as I can tell he’s unchanged.”
“He needs to be inside, in bed. He needs to be made warm and dry,” she fretted. “But the Tower—” She had to wait a moment until she could trust her voice. My mother is dead and my home lies in ruins. “Perhaps the palace is still standing. Perhaps part of it is.”
“Perhaps,” said Charis, “but Deenie, we can’t carry him that far.”
“There is—there was—a handcart in the stables. For shifting bales of hay.” She touched Charis’s cold hand. “Wait here. I’ll go and see.”
The look on Charis’s glimlit face said she wanted to argue—but instead, she nodded. “All right. But take care.”
“And you stay here with them, Pother Ulys,” she added. “Don’t you go anywhere. Not ’til I get back.”
Conjuring a second ball of glimfire, she went in search of the handcart. Found it, by some miracle, one of the few things left intact. Most of the stable yard was a series of gaping holes and piles of rubble. All but one of the stables was swallowed. The open-fronted hay-shed still stood, though. And the smithy. But not the horses. They were gone. Oh, Da. Your dear old Cygnet. Rafe’s Firedragon. Her own mare, sweet Jade. And the lad gone, too. Tam.
I want to weep for them. I do. I want to weep for all of us.
But the earth’s burning pain had boiled away her tears.
She skirted the edge of the wreckage, carefully retrieved the handcart and trundled it back to Da
and Charis and Pother Ulys and Mama.
“We’ll have to leave her behind,” she said, her voice low, after they’d lifted and folded Da into the cart. “I’ll come back in the morning. Once I know about…”
Charis squeezed her hand. “I’ll come back with you, Deenie. Don’t worry. We’ll see her put right.”
Put right? What was right about it? She’d be buried. Hidden in the ground. Mama. On a deep breath Deenie stowed her coin satchel beside Da. Conjured more glimfire to light the carriageway so they’d not tumble themselves into any holes, then took hold of one handle on the cart. Charis took hold of the other.
“Let’s go.”
Pother Ulys walked in front of them, as an extra precaution. The carriageway was rippled and bumpy but they didn’t find any holes. What they did find was the palace, the new sections and the old, collapsed and sagging and not safe to go near.
Ulys gasped. “Barl’s mercy.”
“I can’t believe it,” said Charis, in a small, shocked voice. “It’s the palace. It’s always been here.”
Deenie shrugged, too battered now to feel anything but tired. “Always ended tonight, Charis.”
“Well—” Washed in glimlight, Charis turned to her. “That’s it. We’ll have to go home. To my house.”
If her house was still standing. How much of the city remained after those terrible tremors? There was only one difficult way to find out.
And if Charis’s home is ruined, like the Tower? What do we do then?
“Come on,” said Charis, her chin trembling. “Your da needs a warm bed—and so do we, if we’re not to catch an ague.”
Pushing the handcart out of the palace grounds was exhausting, but at least it chased away the rain’s chill. That cheered them… until they were far enough down the High Street to see and hear what had happened to Dorana City.
“I’m sorry,” said Ulys, staring at the distant fires, the smashed shops and dwellings, the dazed and bloodied people milling on the rippled, glimlit cobblestones. A few city guards were trying to keep order, but they seemed as stunned and aimless as everyone else. “I have to help here. I’ll come to see your father at the mayor’s house, Deenie, as soon as I’m not needed. I promise.”
