Storm Rising

And if anyone was still inside the building, they'd have been caught between the explosion and the brick walls!

This was like a nightmare, where he ran as hard as he could, until his side and lungs burned and he couldn't even catch his breath, and he still made no progress in the knee deep snow. By the time he reached the scene, plenty of other people had already arrived, and the injured had been taken away. All that was left to see were the remains of the boiler and the tower. The wooden door- and window-frames had been blown out of the walls in a shower of glass and splinters, and the brick walls themselves were cracked and bowed ominously outward. Some folk were throwing buckets of snow into the interior of the tower, presumably to put out a fire and cool the remains of the boiler, and every bucketful that went in produced a billow of steam and an ominous hissing.

Karal spotted one of the Masters; the one concerned with mechanics and clockwork, Master Isak. The old man was just standing in the snow, his square, lined face blank, his coat on inside-out. 'What happened?' he cried, grabbing Master Isak's sleeve. 'Was anyone hurt? Who was here?'

Isak wiped his forehead, his shock of white hair and side-whiskers standing out like an angry cat's fur. 'The boiler itself didn't rupture,' he said vaguely. 'It was the offset pipe—just blew, tore the boiler out of its footing and drove it into the far wall in an instant. There were four students here, and they were all hurt, but only Justen was hurt badly. Poor boy! Poor boy! He tried to get the safety valve opened wide to let the pressure off, but it wasn't enough—he ran for the door, but—he was still inside the building when it went, the rest were already at the door and the explosion blew them into the snow. Horrible... just horrible.'

'Was Natoli here?' Karal demanded, shouting and shaking the poor man's arm. 'Was she?'

'They took her with the rest to Healer's,' Isak mumbled, staring blankly at the blood-spattered remains of the door and wringing his hands with anxiety. 'The Healers have them all. I don't know anything else. They just left —'

Karal dropped Isak's arm and sprinted—or tried to—in the direction of the Healer's Collegium. Running through the heavy snow was like trying to run in loose hay; it was impossible to make any progress. And by the time he got there, they had taken Natoli off to a little room by herself and wouldn't let him or anyone else near her.

'She just has a concussion, some bruises, and a broken wrist and ankle' they told him. 'But we don't know for certain, and we can't let anyone in to upset her right now. She's upset enough as it is.'

Why, he soon found out—Justen the boy she'd been helping, had lost both legs to the knee, and was badly scalded elsewhere. Only the fact that he had been blown out into the snow through the door saved him from worse burns. His clothing had been saturated with boiling water, but the snow had cooled it quickly enough that the burns where his clothing had nominally protected him were superficial, though painful.

'At least it wasn't his hands or his eyes,' one of the Healers said grimly, wiping his bloodstained sleeve against his sweating brow. 'As an artificer, he can get along without legs, but not without hands or sight. And considering that he was in the same room as the boiler, he could have been killed.'

That was the general consensus; it could have been a lot worse. That was no comfort to Karal. It is bad enough! He loitered about the quiet halls, trying desperately to find someone to question, but everyone in the Collegium who was concerned with the four injured students was busy, and none of them had any time to talk to him. Anyone else he asked would only say apologetically that he knew as much as they did.

Finally, he gave up and headed for the chambers set up in the Palace where the artificers were working with the mages. Maybe someone there would know something.

No one did; there was a general air of gloom pervading the place. Some, like Master Levy and An'desha, were working grimly at the water-table or at other tasks; their set expressions and the tight lines of their mouths told him that they were trying to distract themselves with work. Others were making no pretense at work; they simply sat with hanging heads and nakedly anxious expressions, looking up with wide and hopeful or fearful eyes whenever someone came to the door.

He joined the pair at the water-table; they were trying some new trick of An'desha's that involved dropping a ring into the table rather than a single stone, and seeing how the waves reflected inward toward the center of the ring. Since the waves of the mage-storms were 'echoing back' to their original center, this seemed to be the best way to simulate the effect.

They did this, over and over again, making minute changes and repeating the experiment mindlessly, then making notes in ledger after ledger. More and more people came to the room, as if aware that any news from the Healers would come here first.

Karal sat on a bench and watched the ring drop, over and over. Elspeth and Darkwind sat next to him and Elspeth put one hand gently on his shoulder; he hadn't seen them come in, but he wasn't surprised that they were here.

The walls of that tower were bowed outward, and the boiler was nothing more than metal scraps, he thought, feeling an invisible hand squeezing his heart. How could she be all right? Pieces of metal must have been shot through the air like lances! Were they just telling me that to make me feel better?

If only he knew! If only someone would come with word!

A box full of the round pebbles they used in the water-table lay on the bench beside him, and he began