Alta

Ring, as he had seen yesterday, but with the exception of a few places like beer shops and markets, it was minimal. There was no sign of yesterday’s disturbance.

To say that things were in a state of chaos was a profound understatement, and the contrast between the Second and Third Rings, where rescue, cleanup, and even rebuilding were organized and well underway, was profound. No one was rebuilding in the Fourth and Fifth Rings. In fact, no one was really cleaning up. There was no organization, except as people organized the members of their own families into work parties. And if there was only one survivor left—well, that one person worked alone, moving the rubble, usually with bare hands.

The shake did not seem to have struck everywhere in the Rings with the same force. In some places, damage was minimal; in others, shocked and bewildered people sat outside the piles of broken bricks and cracked timbers that had been their homes, unable to comprehend what had happened to them, or were slowly and methodically moving over the piles, removing them brick by brick, hoping to find something to save—or someone. You could easily tell the latter. They were the ones working with tears cutting channels through the caked dirt and dust on their faces. They were the ones Kiron tried to help first.

Even when all he could do was to help move bricks. “Where did you see him last?” he would ask. “Where was she sleeping?” And the survivor, so choked with grief that he or she was unable to speak, would point instead. And Kiron would start, trying to pick a “safe” spot to pitch the rubble to, because he did not want to discover that the survivor had been wrong, and he had, all unwittingly, been piling more debris atop someone already buried. Yesterday had been bad after the first rescues were done, because the people he found were sometimes still alive, but one look told him that not even the finest Healer could save them. Today, at least as he worked, he knew that he was only going to recover the bodies so that the ghosts would not wander. Once he uncovered a hand, and once, a foot, and the survivor shoved him aside, weeping, to do the rest of the work. That was when he left, with his part over.

He was in the middle of what had been someone’s sleeping-chamber, when the cries and shouting began.

He’d had his back to the Central Island, so he didn’t see what everyone was shouting about directly—but suddenly, he had a shadow stretching out stark and black in front of him. Filled with a sense of dread, he turned.

Before he had half-completed the turn, he had to squint against the brightness. The slender reed of light cutting down from the Tower of Wisdom was too bright to look at, brighter than lightning, a painful blue-white rod that began at the tip of the Tower, and ended somewhere down in the Second Ring. He thought it was moving, although at the angle he was, it was difficult to tell. But there was no doubt at all that it was touching, and torching, something in the Second Ring.

Just as he had predicted.

Then, with no warning, it was gone, leaving behind an afterimage that crossed his field of vision in a dazzle of purple, and a burning, acrid scent in the air. Then as the after-image faded, he saw that there were fires in the Second Ring where there had been none before.

All around him, work had stopped as people stared, slack-jawed, at the fires and the place where the Eye of Light had cut across the Second Ring. There was absolute silence for a very long time, a silence heavy, and appalled, as if no one could quite believe what they had seen.

Then, into the ponderous silence, the sound of a single brick falling.

That broke the spell, and hesitantly, fearfully, people went back to work.

The rumors began to fly almost immediately. Most absurd, of course, was that the Magi had discovered a nest of subversive Tian priests—ones that had actually caused the earthshake—and had used the Eye to burn them out. Most prevalent, and most accurate, was that the only things that had been burned belonged to those folk on Second Ring who had confronted the Magi the night before. No one really bought into the first rumor, but there was no doubt that, whatever people might say, deep down inside the one that they believed was the second.

Kiron kept his mouth shut, volunteering nothing. Knowing the Magi, he would not doubt that there were spies about—or at least, people who would report what was said back to the Tower of Wisdom for a reward. Fortunately, no one knew he had actually been there when the confrontation took place, so no one asked him any questions. Once in a while, some of those he was helping asked him what he was and where he belonged, and he answered, truthfully, that he was one of the new young Jousters with the baby dragons. And for a moment, tragic gazes would soften, and perhaps, someone would say, “Ah. The pretty ones . . . but why are you here?”

“Because you need help,” he would tell them.

Shortly before noon, an official-looking fellow in an absurdly clean kilt showed up, took up a stance in the middle of what had been the street, and began shouting.

“All hear!” he cried. “All hear! Hear the words of the Great Ones to the people of Alta!”

Some folk dropped what they were doing to gather around him, but most simply went on with their work, keeping an ear and half of their attention on him. If this bothered him, it didn’t show. He looked bored with the entire proceedings, and a bit impatient, as if he wanted to get this business over with and get back to something important.

He was thin and energetic, with the look of a scribe and the lungs of a military commander. He wore a yellow-and-white sash running from his right shoulder to his left hip, and a matching striped headcloth.

“Who is that?” Kiron muttered to the man he was helping, in an undertone.

“Royal Herald,” the man muttered back, without taking his attention off the pile of rubble they were moving.

The man continued to shout his summoning call until he either grew tired of it, or figured he had gathered around all the people he was going to get.

“The Gods have unfolded to the Great Ones that the mighty earthshake was caused by the false Tian Priests!” the Herald proclaimed. “So subtle their work, and so wrapped in dark magic, that there was no foretelling that it would strike.”

“Bollocks,” the man with Kiron muttered. “If they were that good, they’d have flattened the Central Island.”

“When the damage to the First, Second, and Third Rings has been cleared, the army will send men and tools here.”

The man snorted. “By that time, we’ll have cleared it with our hands alone.” The back of his neck was red with anger as he turned away from Kiron, and he flung the piece of beam he had picked up with great force onto the pile of trash.

“The hiding places of foul spies of the false Tian Priests, the stores where they have secreted poisons and weapons, have been discovered on the Second Ring. In their wisdom, the Magi of the Tower have sent forth the Eye of Light to cleanse these places.” Kiron risked a glance at the Herald, and saw that the man was watching him and the house owner with narrowed gaze. “As more such hiding places are discovered, they will be cleansed, so fear not to see the Eye Opened, but rejoice that the Magi watch over all of Alta.”

Having delivered his message to this part of the Ring, the Herald did not wait for questioning, but strode on and outward.

The man with Kiron spat. “Bastards. ‘Poisons and weapons and spies,’ my ass! Places where people are asking questions is more like! Pockets of people wanting to know why the Winged Ones didn’t warn us!”

Another man in what was left of the next house over straightened and looked warningly at him. “I’d be careful about what I say, Atef-ka,” the neighbor said. “I’m not saying you aren’t right—but if you are, well—you saw their answer.”

Atef-ka looked bleakly at his neighbor. “Too right,” was all he replied, but both of them looked sick.

Well, for all that he had predicted just this action, Kiron felt sick, too. Sick, and angry.

He had to return to the compound to feed and exercise Avatre, and to do so, because once again bridges were closed except for certain “privileged” folk, he had to go to the Second Ring to get to the Third, and pass right by the site where the Eye had touched.

There was nothing there but a slab of glasslike, fused earth, still hot. Fires smoldered around the perimeter. And the silent, white faces of those whose duties kept them here said it all.

But when he got back to the compound, there was someone waiting for him, in his chamber, along with Aket-ten. Someone he had not expected to see there.