Evacuation

by Sherry Foster

  As Darian circled around Central he noticed people running, quite a lot of people. Many were running and looking over their shoulders or upwards. Darian looked upwards but did not see anything above him that would warrant the panic he was seeing in the streets. After the events three years prior, when many meteorites had impacted the surface of the planet people were more fearful and more watchful of the skies. But Darian could not see any danger from above.

  “Why is everyone down there running away?” Darian’s shouted question carried in the wind to all the other members of the Lyra.

  The others had been so busy catching up with their dragons they had hardly paid attention when they reached the skies over the capital, they certainly had not paid attention to the activity on the street. Kervin’s eyes widened as he realized what was going on. Calling out he told everyone, “Get your dragons down, everyone get them down to the grounding garden.”

  As the twelve landed in the grounding garden, the special enclosed garden attached to Central, created just for the dragons to land in, they realized it was a tight fit. All twelve dragons had never before needed to land at Central at the same time. The dragons shuffled around as best they could in the large garden as their riders dismounted. Usually, when the dragons came to Central, it was to enter the Gathering Hall in route to the Great Room. It was rare for more than two dragons to be there at the same time. When the men and women realized, though the dragons fit in the grounding garden, they would certainly not be able to sprawl out and wait on their riders, a quick discussion and the dragons were sent to the country homes of each of the riders.

  Each of the members of the three Lyra were loath to see the dragons leave, and because of the recent separation, they were more than a little concerned the dragons would disappear again before they could complete the business at Central. As the dragons rose into the air, one at a time, and flew towards the homes they shared with their riders the Lyra backed away to give them room. Darian took this opportunity to ask Kervin “So why do you think everyone was running, I did not see anything to panic them? Do you think something happened with the portal while we were gone? They were moving at a pretty fast run away from Central.” Darian looked around, but with the garden enclosed all he could see was the huge double doors leading into the sorcerer hall on one side and the small door leading into the governing hall on the other.

  The others closed in around Kervin waiting to see what he had to say. No one else had seen anything to panic the people and everyone was concerned something had happened to Central while they were gone. Though everyone had closed in around Kervin they seemed to be inching toward the sorcerer hall double doors. They would inch away as though pulled toward the hall and ease back toward Kervin. Kervin, looking around noticed the only two not moving was himself and Darian, who was just standing waiting for Kervin to say something. Finally Kervin shrugged his shoulders, “If I had to guess I would say they were running from us.”

  Darian scoffed, “That is crazy, why would our people run from us?”

  Kervin saw when the realization of what they had done occurred to everyone. A few grimaced and a few cursed and shook their heads. Darian kind of closed his eyes and just shook his head. “All the dragons in one place, hovering above the capital, and no one has every really been comfortable with dragons to begin with. We messed up with this move. Now we have to calm the people and try to get our plans going.”

  Patro gave his opinion “I really am not worried about everyone having a panic attack because they saw the leaders of the race land on the dragons they all know we ride. I am worried about the time frame for making plans. We have to send runners to each town to bring the councils together…”

  Before he could finish the thought Trista broke in to tell him, “No councils, we deal with one person, one town lead from each town and they can deal with the councils. I am not getting in a squabble with each council member trying to get everyone to agree on everything.”

  Kane and Patro doubled over in laughter at this announcement and Sarian had a smirk on his face. Trista and Kervin looked at each other then at the two men. If someone had told a joke they had missed it. Kervin raised his eyebrows and looked at Trista again, silently asking if she knew what was going on. Trista shrugged and shook her head and the two returned their attention to the laughing men. Before either of them could ask what was so funny Sarian told them.

  “I would like you to meet someone, Trista, Kervin, meet Darian. Darian has no patience with endless arguing among council members. Darian refuses to listen to committee type discussions. Darian has trained the councils of each town over the years to stay silent, take notes, discuss things away from him and then return with their questions, concerns, or solutions. When things do not go his way he may, accidentally, get frustrated and it is possible that once or twice in the past he may have well, lets just say no council members argue in any meeting we have. Ever! At least, they don’t anymore. So it is quite safe to have the councils of each town and even the shire seat members in one large meeting. As long as Darian is in charge of the meeting, or standing at the back of whoever is in charge of the meeting.”

  Kervin, head bowed, hands covering his face found himself speechless. When he felt he had himself under control he looked up, glaring, “Do you mean to tell me Darian has attacked the council members?”

  Sarian was shaking his head, “I don’t mean to tell you any such thing.”

  Darian, unable to just let the matter rest, looked at Kervin with incredulous disbelief on his face. “Of course I never attacked a council member. Not really. What, exactly, is your definition of attack?”

  “Have you ever laid a hand on any of the council members?” Kervin snarled.

  As Darian’s eyes widened he held up his hands, “What, like hit them? Of course I never actually hit a council member.”

  Trista, who had been watching Patro and Kane during this exchange, decided Darian was not the best person to answer the questions being asked. “Kane, why don’t the council members argue around Darian? I never had a single meeting with them without an argument, nor did I ever, not one time in three thousand years of our rule, get them to all agree upon one thing at any meeting. What did he do?”

  As Kervin and Trista both gave their attention to Kane they noticed he grimaced before telling them, “What Darian said is absolutely true. He never actually hit a council member.”

  Darian, standing to the side could not refrain from smirking, “Maybe I am just a better leader then the two of you ever were.”

  Silence fell over the men and women assembled in the garden as each person turned to look at Darian in disbelief as such a blatant lie fell so easily from his lips. No one who knew Darian would ever accuse him of being a good leader, certainly not better than his predecessors. For a moment no one could speak as they tried to process what Darian had just said. Finally, Darian, tired of everyone staring at him in silence turned and began to walk toward the small door leading into the government wing. The others fell in behind him, still speechless.

  Soon all twelve were striding down the hall way to the meeting room. As they passed by one room Kane paused, sticking his head in the door he told someone on the other side “We need runners.” An barely audible voice returned some answer but no one but Kane could hear it, and Kane had already backed away from the door. At this he again stuck his head in the door and could be heard saying, “All of them, I want every runner you have. Just send them to the meeting room.” As he jogged to catch up the others could hear him muttering to himself. A few of the comments were clear enough to hear such as “next time I will have Darian ask for runners, no one would have asked Darian for a reason, no, but let me asked and they are all ‘what do you need runners for?’, Darian is going to be the one to ask for the Elite.”

  Darian snorted and told him, “It is because you want to coddle everyone. Just tell them to do their jobs and don’t worry about the whys.”

  “Great Shadows man, you can’t treat pe
ople that way.” Kervin protested.

  Darian looked over at Kervin and smugly told him, “But they don’t argue and things get done. How successful did you say your meetings were with town councils?”

  Kervin took a deep breath and, ignoring Darian, looked at Kane “What was it you said he did to get the town councils to behave in meetings?”

  Kane’s eyebrows shot up, “I did not say.”

  Sarian snorted, “He shot fireballs at their heads until they understood he had no patience.”

  Eight faces full of shock turned toward Darian, all forward movement stopped. Darian and his bond brothers just looked back at their fellow Lyra. Sarian finally took pity on them, “He didn’t hit them with the fireballs, and no we did not agree with what he did. But, you have to admit, as wrong as it was at the time, it will be a good thing for us that he instilled that fear in them. I don’t agree that leaders lead through fear, so don’t even think any of us,” pointing toward Kane and Patro then himself, “agreed with what he did. We did try to put a stop to it when it happened. We still do not think it was right, but his anger issues have just saved us much time. Time we do not have to waste according to Tresimiaset. Trust us when I tell you we will all be thankful for that fear when we try to plan. Can you imagine trying to move the race if we had to fight council members every step of the way? It is not often that something Darian does in anger works out in our favor but this, I can see it working.”

  No one had anything to say to this pronouncement, except of course Darian, “Yes, you should all be thanking me.”

  “Thanking you? For threatening council members? With fire? You think we should thank you for being such a poor leader you have to threaten and terrorize people with less power than you just to get them to agree with you?” Kervin could not believe what he was hearing.

  “I did not say they agreed with Darian, I said they do not argue around him, anymore. Mostly they disagree with anything Darian says, just not where Darian can hear them. They are very good at coming up with solutions to problems instead of trying to throw everything on the leadership of the race. Very polite and courteous when they give their argument for whatever it is they want. Usually with a ready solution they just need approval for before acting.” Sarian, knowing he was one fourth of the leadership felt he had to stand up for himself and the others. What Darian did reflected badly upon the other three, he knew that, but sometimes Darian acted before anyone could stop him. All one could do at that point was try to mitigate the damages. Sarian, Patro and Kane had gotten very good at mitigating the damage over the centuries.

  Kervin swallowing hard, turned and began walking back down the hallway to the meeting room. Calling over his shoulder he told Darian, “Get the Elites and meet us there.”

  After Darian had turned down another hallway and jogged away Kervin looked at Sarian, “Why did none of you tell us this rule had gotten to such a point? Your bond with each other is barely there, Darian is, well I have no words. Don’t you know we would have helped, somehow, had we known what was going on? Why did none of the people come to us? Trista could have helped, I could have helped, somehow we could helped you.”

  Patro, bitterness evident in his voice looked at Kervin scornfully, “How Kervin, how could you or Trista have helped? Could you have taken away his anger problems? Could you have fixed our bond? Don’t you think we see how a bonded Lyra should be? Don’t you think we can see what we are missing? Could you have made him less impulsive? Could you have fixed his uniquely Darian logic? Because I have to tell you we have tried, all of us have tried. We have no idea what makes him look at the world like he does, and we are bonded to him. Do you think you could have done better? Do you think we enjoy watching Kane and Darian at each others throats all the time? What could you have fixed that our bond can’t?”

  Kervin and Trista had no answer for the questions Patro asked. They had discussed Darian many times over the centuries and had never figured out why he looked at life like he did. They had never figured out why the bond was not strong. They both had agreed, many times, if they had to deal with someone like Darian all the time they would be bitter at life themselves. It was surprising to them that Kane, Patro and Sarian had not gone insane dealing with Darian over the centuries.

  The group was silent as they entered the meeting room.

  Chapter 15

  When Darian entered the meeting room everyone was silent staring at the floor. He had thought they would have been brainstorming some planning till he got there. Behind him Elite began to fill the room and soon runners came flooding into the room. Darian narrowed his eyes and stared at his fellow Lyra as he moved to his seat at the front of the room. Elites and runners looked questioningly at the Lyra sitting around the tables. Most of the meetings lately had involved sorcerers and scientists, not runners and Elite.

  Since Trista’s Lyra and Kervin’s Lyra were not lead Lyra’s anymore they had no assigned seating in the meeting room. They did have a table they unofficially claimed for meetings such as this. In the centuries since Darian and his bond brothers had taken over the rule the three Lyra had never had to all gather in this room with anyone until two weeks ago when the portal had been brought to Darian and the other’s attention. In the first meeting Kervin and Trista had claimed a table near the front of the room and everyone since had left that table alone. Even when they were not in the meetings, still no one sat at that table.

  Darian looked around the room once more, trying to figure out what was so fascinating about the floor. He looked down at the floor to see if any changes had been made to it since their last meeting a couple of days prior. He did not see anything particularly special about the floor. It was still the same gray stone with streaks of black swirling through it as it had always been. Finally, just when Darian had decided maybe he should ask someone what they saw on the floor Elite Bryol asked Trista why they had been called to the room.

  As if a spell had been broken everyone looked up startled to see the room full of Elite and runners. Everyone, with the exception of Darian, had entered the room in a solemn mood, each person pondering the whys of Darian being born to lead. Patro might pity the race for having to deal with Darian, Kane might pity his Lyra but Trista and Kervin feared for the race with Darian as lead fire walker. Neither had realized how bad things were in the leadership and neither one had any idea how to fix the problem. They worried about all the things that could go wrong trying to move everyone with Darian partially in charge.

  When Darian saw everyone’s attention was back in the here and now he realized, they had not bothered to plan how they needed to plan. Darian was by no means a stupid man, impulsive, angry, but not without a very sharp intelligence. It was unfortunate he did not have a logic to match the intelligence. Taking control of the meeting he started out by telling everyone, “We have to meet with the town councils and the shire seats. We can not, we do not have time, to go from town to town getting everyone together. I need each of you to take a look at the map on the wall and pick a town, or more than one, and announce to them that I have called a mandatory meeting for four hours after dawn, Central time, tomorrow. They will be here, in this room or they will answer to me. And no excuse will be tolerated. Ah, shire seats need to be in the meeting also.” Looking at the Elite all he said was, “Islands.”

  The runners had experience with Darian and not a single one opened his or her mouth to ask why. They just took out the booklet they kept on hand to make any notes they needed for their job and moved to the back of the room. On the back wall was an enormous map of the land they called home. The map contained every town in the land plus a few island towns. Some of the more country areas were broken into shires with lead seats. The runners began to section out the land and pick towns, they needed to hurry if they were to visit each town by nightfall.

  No one can step to a place they have not been but runners train for such things as they were being asked to do. Each runner had been through extensive training involving stepping to e
very town and shire seat on the map until they had them memorized. The only ones they were not tasked with learning were the islands. Some islands were some distance from the mainland and stepping through the void, across great bodies of water, was hard. No one knew why an island equal distance from Central as some of the far towns was harder to step to but it was. Few runners every attained the ability to step those distances. The older, more experienced runners would go the longer distances, just because stepping too far, too often was caused fatigue easily.

  While the runners divided up the land the Elite moved to a table and discussed the islands. They did not need a map. The Elite trained harder than anyone in the race. When it came to raw power they were second only to the Lyra. They could, by the time their specific Lyra took over the race at a thousand years of age, step anywhere in the world, and back. Some distances were so hard they would only make one round trip. They could make more but it would be so hard on them they would be worthless at the end of the trip. So no one, not even Bryol, who was unquestionably the strongest, even beyond the ones more senior to him, would take more than one long distance trip if the end was across one of the vast oceans.

  Having divided up the islands the Elite took one last look around the room at everyone and stepped away. Some time later the runners had finally divided the land as best they could and they too began stepping away one after another.

  When the room was finally clear Kervin cleared his throat, “Might be best if we planned what we need to say and what we need to do to get this evacuation underway. I have a suggestion. I propose we each take a notepad and divide up into our separate units and brainstorm ideas of how we will handle the councils and what we need to get done. I for one am getting hungry so if no one has an objection I say we go get something to eat and meet back here after the evening meal with our notes and ideas. I do not see us getting much sleep tonight, or for that matter very much in the months to come. An hour after dusk meet back here? Will that work for everyone?”