Wizardborn (60 page)

He considered abandoning Myrrima while he went for help. She was a large woman, and he didn't know how far he could carry her. But the wolf was howling, and he dared not leave her. Besides, he knew that she would not want to die alone.

He carried her.

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Catastrophe teaches us humility, compassion, courage, and perseverance. Beyond that, it's an absolute bother and I have no use for it.

—
Duke Paldane

At the Courts of Tide, yet another tremor struck. Messengers from all over the countryside carried reports of the damage to Iome. In the hours since the quakes first hit, towers in a dozen castles had collapsed, along with a bridge that joined two of the larger islands in the city.

More frightening were reports of damage in the poorer quarters. There, cheap shanties collapsed and caught flame, so that even now the people of the Courts of Tide battled fires on a dozen fronts. Worse, huge waves beat the northern shores after the first temblor. The waves capsized boats and swept more than a thousand cottages into the sea.

The death toll would not be known for days.

So fires lit the city, while pillars of smoke rose.

Servants and guards from Gaborn's palace all took refuge outside, bringing blankets and furs to lie on.

No one slept.

Lanterns brightened the courtyard. The cooks carried out stores of bread, huge hams, and slabs of beef. In an attempt to lighten the mood, the king's minstrels decided to play.

It made for a macabre carnival.

Iome felt almost as if she were accursed by the Earth.

But as reports came in, she realized that the tremors had nothing to do with her. Apparently the devastation was
worse a dozen miles north, where whole villages had been flattened.

Messengers inundated the castle, requesting men to help in rescue efforts. Chamberlain Westhaven, who handled the normal duties while the king was gone, deferred judgment on such matters to Iome.

For hours Iome sat in the open courtyard while the minstrels played and couriers bore tales of woe. With the help of various scribes and minor lords, she levied lords for men to help with the rescue efforts and to feed and shelter the homeless. She appropriated funds to begin rebuilding.

In one night she spent twelve times as much gold as her father would have in a year, until she began to worry whether she squandered Gaborn's wealth.

She had no experience running such a large kingdom. The problem threatened to overwhelm her. Time and again, Chamberlain Westhaven offered advice at crucial moments. He was a competent man and knew the realm far better than she did.

As she worked, her Days curled up on the ground and merely watched, trying not to sleep. A dozen times after Iome had brought the girl out of the tower, the Days thanked her profusely. For long minutes, the girl could not help crying, and Iome longed to give her comfort.

Obviously, the Days worried for her family, a few miles to the north.

Yet Iome could not feel any comfort herself. There had been strange tremors in Heredon before she left. She'd felt them again south of Carris, and now here at the Courts of Tide. Were they related?

Gaborn claimed it was a message: The Earth was in pain. But if the minor tremors had been a sign of its pain, Iome wondered, what could this devastating quake mean?

Intuition told her that these matters were related. She tried not to worry about it.

Thus the ground shook and fires raged throughout the city when a tall, gaunt scholar came through the crowd that had gathered in the courtyard around the King's Keep.

He wore a blue robe with silver stars sewn upon it, marking him as a stargazer. He had a long silver beard and piercing eyes.

Chamberlain Westhaven leaned close and whispered, “Hearthmaster Jennaise, from the Room of Stars. I suspect that his watchtower has fallen. But may I remind Your Highness that we do not spend funds repairing their buildings. The House of Understanding has always been supported solely by its patrons.”

Iome nodded.

The stargazer strode to Iome and said in a Ferecian accent, “Your Highness, I beg the queen's ear. We have a great problem, an unprecedented problem.”

“How may I help you, Hearthmaster Jennaise?”

“I'm not sure where to begin,” the stargazer said in a befuddled tone. Of course not, she thought. Ferecians never know where to begin, or how to finish, or when to get to the point.

“Your watchtower has sustained damage?”

“The observatory? It's a mess—charts and scrolls everywhere. And there was a fire! My assistant nearly died trying to save the maps. It will take weeks to clean it. I'm sure the water we threw on the fire did as much damage as the flames themselves—but, er, uh, that is not your concern, is it? Indeed, I'm not sure if any of this is your concern.”

“Nor am I,” Iome said quite frankly, for she had no more idea what his problem was than when he had first opened his mouth.

He looked at the crowd of servants and whispered, “Your Highness, may we speak privately?”

Iome nodded, and together they strolled through the courtyard over to the shadows beneath a pair of pecan trees, in a dark corner by the castle wall.

“Milady,” he said, “what do you know of the stars?”

“They're pretty,” Iome said dryly.

“Yes,” Jennaise said. “And you may also know that as the seasons progress, the constellations rotate about the sky. At the first of the year, Elwind rides over the mountains of
the north. But at high summer he is almost straight overhead.”

“I know,” Iome said.

“Then it is with great… bewilderment that I must report that the stars are wrong.”

“What?” Iome asked.

“The stars are wrong tonight. It is all very baffling. Tonight is the third of the month of Leaves. But by our charts, the stars read as if it were the twentieth of the month of Harvest—off by two weeks.”

“How can that be?” Iome asked. “Could the charts be wrong? Perhaps—”

“The charts are not wrong. I've been over them a hundred times. I can think of only one explanation,” Jennaise answered. “The world is taking some new path through the heavens. Even the moon—by my preliminary measurements—”

A moment before Iome had felt overwhelmed. Now she was staggered. She stared at him with her mouth open, and finally managed to ask, “What can we do?”

Jennaise shook his head. “I—perhaps no one can help. But your husband
is
the Earth King.”

Suddenly she recalled Averan's words. The One True Master was binding the Rune of Desolation to the Runes of Heaven and the Inferno. She planned to make a new world, where mankind would not survive.

Could she wrest the Earth from its appointed course? “Of course,” Iome said. “I'll—send word immediately.”

Even if the One True Master had done this, how could Gaborn stop her? He'd lost most of his own powers.

The stargazer turned to leave, and Iome desperately cast her eyes over the courtyard. She called for a courier, thinking to pen a message to Gaborn.

But even as she began thinking how to frame the words, she realized that she wasn't telling Gaborn anything that he didn't already know.

He'd warned Iome that if he did not destroy the reavers'
lord, his people would all die. He knew the danger as well as she did.

Or did he? she wondered. Gaborn could sense danger, but he could never tell from what quarter it might come. And nearly all of his Chosen in Mystarria were still near the city of Carris. He couldn't sense danger to those outside the city. She wondered what Gaborn would say if she warned him of her suspicions of an impending attack here at the Courts of Tide. Would he ask her to go, or to stay? She wondered what he would say if he knew that the world was out of its course.

Just then, Grimeson came into the courtyard with a facilitator in tow. “Milady,” he shouted. “We got them endowments that Gaborn wanted.”

Iome's thoughts had been a jumble. She'd forgotten about the endowments. Gaborn had ordered the facilitators to prepare vectors for Averan. Now, the facilitator would need to escort the vectors to Gaborn.

“Get horses and set off immediately,” Iome told Grimeson. “Every second counts.”

“Milady,” Grimeson said, “these vectors have been up all night. I wouldn't want one of them to fall off his horse. There's royal carriages that would be almost as fast as a horse.”

“By all means then, we'll take carriages.”

“We?”

Iome felt as if the world were falling apart around her. Gaborn had sent her here to be “safe.” But the quakes had struck and towers collapsed and the stars were falling. The world was out of its course.

No place was safe.

Her place was beside Gaborn, but she couldn't follow him into the Underworld. There, she would only be a liability to him. He was the Earth King still, and though his powers were diminished, he alone might stand against the reaver lord.

Yet there had to be something more that she could do than wait here at the Courts of Tide. She glanced back over
her shoulder, saw Chamberlain Westhaven taking a few moments to advise half a dozen lords in her absence. He knew this realm better than she did.

“Grimeson,” she said with finality. “Get my escort. I'm coming with you. I need to speak to Gaborn.”

She penned a note to Chamberlain Westhaven, warning him to prepare for an attack from the sea, and handed it to a page.

In moments she was gone.

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