“No!” That was still another Healer, a rough-looking old fellow with a fair number of scars. “Not so, Eldest. I know the sea, and the sea does strange things in shakes; it can withdraw for leagues, then come rushing back and overwhelm all in its path. No, we must take the boats and make our way through the canals inland, to one of the Daughters, and thence up the Great Mother River if we must.”
“I bow to your experience, Te-ren-hatem,” she said, after a moment. “But there is one thing we must do; it is more important to Heal that dragon now than anything else, no matter how much it costs our Healers by touch.”
The man looked at her aghast. “But Eldest, it is but an animal, and there are many, many injured and more to come!”
“You Healers by touch can Heal a few, perhaps even a dozen, before you are exhausted,” the old woman said, with a look that dared him to challenge her. “But unless you spend that same strength to heal that dragon, she will not last past noon. And then, where will all those thousands be who will need the guidance of her Jouster?” As the man’s face fell, she softened her tone. “I know it is hard hearing this, Te,” she said softly. “But you know as well as I that Healing is, and always has been, a balancing game, weighing out resources against the greatest good. In the best of times, that balancing never needs to come into play, but this is the worst of times, and we must do what must be done. The greatest good, right now, is to heal that poor, faithful animal, so that she can serve all of Alta that survives.”
He bowed. “Yes, Eldest,” he said softly. “I will get the others.”
As he moved off, the Healer turned back to Kiron and Aket-ten. “And as for you—heed me, children. The same advice—nay, orders!—apply to you. Save the ones you can. Save the most that you can. There will be people trapped, hurt, begging for help that you cannot aid. You must leave them, leave them behind, leave them to others, but leave them. If there is a later, you may come back, but if you linger over one, when you could have saved many in that same time, you will have done the wrong thing.”
He gritted his teeth; he hated hearing that, but he knew it was true, and he silenced Aket-ten’s protest with a squeeze of his hand on hers. “Hard truths are still truths. Eldest, thank you. I will get aloft; I know that when Re-eth-ke is fit to fly, Aket-ten will do likewise, and as we see the others returning, I will send them to do the same.” He squeezed Aket-ten’s hand again, just as another shake began.
This time all three of them instinctively reached for each other and braced one another through the shake. “They are getting worse,” the Eldest Healer said, when the dreadful rumbling and crashing had subsided—and across the canal, yet another building (or what was left of one) had vanished.
“Then I must go.” He bent and kissed Aket-ten. “You and I must separate, to cover the widest area. If the sea does what that Healer thinks it will—you must go to the harbor and warn them first, for you are the daughter of Ya-tiren, and you know how to command.”
Her head came up, though her lower lip trembled a little. “I will do that,” she said, without hesitation. “Then I shall return and work the First Ring and so forth.”
“Good.” He did not say, I know you will be fine, or I am counting on you, because he did not need to say any such thing. This was Wingleader to Jouster. He would treat her as she wanted to be treated, not as his beloved whom he wished to protect, nor the noble daughter, but as any of the other members of his wing.
She could not manage a smile, but she gave a solemn nod. He sketched a salute, and sprinted for Avatre. She was only too happy to be in the air, even if that air was full of dust and thick with the smoke of many fires.
He began working his way along the canal, for that was where there were likely to be boats. His appearance was marked by shouts and cries for help, some of which made him want to break down and weep with frustration over how little he could actually do. But he hardened himself, and limited himself to sending people to where he had seen undamaged boats, despite pleas for other aid. “There are only two of us Jousters right now; we have to find and warn others. Make for the river,” he told them, over and over again. “The sea is not to be trusted in a shake! Get as far away as you can, until you can no longer feel the shaking.”
“The Magi?” he was asked, by virtually every party he encountered. “What has happened to the Magi?”
“They are dead,” he always responded, because even if it wasn’t entirely true, no Magus would be safe in these lands for generations to come. “As are the Great Kings and Queens, and most who dwelled on Central Island. The gods have deserted them, even the evil gods that they once served. Alta is dying and there is no saving her. Ocean and marsh alike are taking her back with each new shake; it is the gods’ own will, and you cannot fight the gods. Now fly! Fly, lest you die with her!”
And at that point, since most of them owned no more than what they stood up in or had saved from the wreckage of their homes, they did not argue with him, they picked up their belongings, aided the wounded, and made for the boats.
Strangely enough—at least, until he thought about it—was that no one begged him to carry them away. That was what he had most dreaded, especially if it came from someone who was injured.
But they didn’t. In fact, they kept a cautious distance from him when he landed. And then, after a few frantic reactions to sudden moves from Avatre he realized that they were used, not to tame dragons, but the wild-caught ones.
The wild-caught ones were still dangerous to anyone not a Jouster or a dragon boy. Someone visibly injured might well be considered a possible menu item . . . and the injured were well aware of that and made a great effort to appear perfectly fine. It might have been funny, if it hadn’t been so tragic.
The only times when he did stop and pick someone up were when he found children wandering alone, or—more tragically—infants with dead parents. Then he stopped, caught them up, and carried them to the next group with children or infants. He never gave the impromptu guardians a chance to object either. “We are all Altans,” he would say bluntly. “We will care for our own. Tend to this little one.”
No one refused. Maybe they were afraid to. In any event, when he checked back with groups with which he had left children, they were caring for the foundlings as well as their own. In a couple of cases, he found a woman in the party cradling the child possessively, and he wondered, had he united a bereft mother with a replacement for the child she had lost?
Ari was the first to return. Kiron spotted him coming in from the south, and went to meet him. By then, Aket-ten was in the air, had presumably dealt with the people at the harbor, and was working the interior of the First Ring, guiding people through the maze of broken buildings and toppled statues to the one causeway still intact—a floating footbridge made of raft sections lashed together, a replacement for a causeway that had collapsed in an earlier shake.
He didn’t even need to say anything, he just pointed at Re-eth-ke hovering in the middle distance, and Ari practically went limp with relief. He straightened immediately, though. “We saw Re-eth-ke rise from the Healers’ Court!” he called. “I thought I was having a vision at first. But Seft’s own chaos was breaking loose, so we landed and each took a sick or wounded Healer out.”
“It’s getting w—” Kiron began, when another shake interrupted him.