Bound by Blood and Sand
Page 31

“It’s not for my good,” she snapped, then looked stricken and turned to Elan. “I—I didn’t mean that, Highest. I do understand. It’s just—Aredann is my home. The idea of abandoning it to the desert…”
“I understand, Lady,” Elan said gently, and for a moment he thought of Jae, the grim look on her face when she’d said she was determined to save Aredann. He hesitated, wanting to tell them the truth. “Lady, the mage-crafted fountain in the garden, the one in that mosaic…”
“What about it?” Lady Shirrad asked.
“I think…I think there may be something unusual about it. Do you know if it was really built by Lord Aredann?”
“I have no idea, Highest,” Lady Shirrad said. “I think so, but I’m not sure.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Desinn said. “We can’t move it, we can’t take it with us. It’s a tragedy to lose an artifact like that, but there are plenty of other mage-crafted sculptures back in Danardae.”
“Yes, but…It’s just that…” Elan trailed off, still not quite at ease with the idea of telling them. Yes, Jae could find them the Well; he was sure of that now. But she was so angry and volatile. With the Curse to control her, it shouldn’t matter, but something inside him twisted when he remembered her bitter claims about the Well’s founding. She had to truly believe she was right in order to make those claims at all—but if she said something like that to his father, or even Desinn, their reaction would be swift and violent.
No one questioned the Highest or their history. Especially not some Closest girl. Even if she’d been driven to believe madness by whatever magic had consumed her, she didn’t deserve his father’s wrath.
“What?” Desinn demanded again.
Elan started to reply, crafting a nonanswer, but the ground shook suddenly, shifting and lurching like a drunkard staggering. Desinn went silent, mouth still open, shocked.
“What was…,” Elan started, jumping to his feet, but he trailed off as the floor trembled and then shook, tremors sending the table skidding from side to side. He crouched, trying to keep his balance, as the mosaic propped against the wall crashed to the floor. Lady Shirrad shrieked, stumbling, her arms flailing at the air. Elan grabbed one of her hands as another tremor hit. The floor buckled, knocking ancient bricks out of place and sending them skidding across the floor.
He looked up. The floor was moving and sending the walls shaking with it. The ceiling was made of the same bricks as the floor, but if the walls were knocked over like the mosaic had been—
A steady rush of dust, ancient mortar knocked out of place, cascaded down. “Quick!” Elan shouted, pulling Shirrad with him as he dove under the table and braced it, trying to hold it still above him.
“What’s happening?” Shirrad screamed as Desinn came to cower under the table with them.
“I don’t know,” Elan managed. He gestured Desinn toward the table leg. “Hold that! If the ceiling comes down…”
A brick banged against the table. Shirrad screamed again, and Desinn scrambled to do as Elan had said, to hold the table in place even as the floor kept shaking back and forth.
“This is impossible!” Desinn yelled above the din of groaning bricks and crashes and screams from across the household. “The ground can’t— Nothing like this has ever—not since the War!”
Elan’s gasp was lost to the storm of sounds around them as he realized what was happening. Legends said that during the War, mages had turned the ground into a weapon, had used it to swallow up whole armies. They’d called down lightning and fire, and sandstorms that had buried entire estates. Every battle had been fought with magic, won by the side with stronger mages. Now there was only one person at Aredann who could use magic—but he’d ordered her not to.
A scream rose above the rest of the clatter, but not from any of them. It took Elan a second to realize that the scream wasn’t one person’s alone. He couldn’t tell how many, but the scream echoed through the whole room and left him ill. It sounded like someone being crushed to death—maybe dozens of people.
The scream went silent as abruptly as it had started, and the ground fell still. Elan could hear his heart beating in the sudden quiet, and had managed to take a real breath, to open his mouth, when the ground started seizing again. He grabbed for the table leg, but the whole table skittered across the floor, dragging him and Desinn with it. Shirrad shrieked as a brick crashed down next to her. She scrambled and rolled away, unable to get her footing. The table hit the wall and shuddered from the impact.
“We’re going to be crushed!” Shirrad yelled, scurrying in a half crawl toward them. “If the wall comes down on the table—”
“The whole ceiling will come with it!” Desinn interrupted.
Desinn was right. Whether it was the wall or the ceiling that came down, they were dead unless this stopped. “Stay here,” Elan said to both of them. He took a moment to gather himself and then ducked out from under the table. He couldn’t quite get his footing as he tried to make it toward the door, but if this was Jae, he had to stop her. He didn’t know how she was doing this despite his order, but he’d use the Curse to force her to stop.
He scurried toward the garden out of habit, but before he reached it, the ground stilled again. He paused, waiting, counting his own heartbeats. When the world didn’t show any more signs of upending itself at the count of fifteen, he started walking again. At thirty he started running.
He surveyed the garden. It was in better shape than the study had been. Dirt and sand were everywhere, and a few bricks had fallen out of the building walls, but there hadn’t been much else in it to be destroyed. Even the fountain was heavy enough to stay upright, its base holding it in place.
A girl lay next to it, hard to see in the long, dusky shadows. Elan jogged toward her, afraid of what he’d find. If she’d hit her head against the fountain when she’d fallen, there was no telling what shape she’d be in. There was no blood on her, though, and she was breathing. Judging from her simple, dirty shift and bare feet, she was one of the Closest, but he didn’t know her name.
Crouching next to her, he rolled her onto her back. She gasped, her eyes open and blinking rapidly.
“Are you all right?” he asked.