Raffi swallowed, his throat dry. The wind screamed against the shutters.
“They’ve put a spell on the weather. In revenge, there’s no doubt. They want to terrorize us all into fearing them. The Order always ruled by fear, we all know that . . .”
“No!” Suddenly Galen’s pent-up anger exploded. He pushed Solon back and shoved through the crowd. “No! The Order ruled by love!”
“Love!” the stout man scoffed. “It was lies, all of it! Flain and the Makers! What did they make? The world? The world grew, friend, like a seed.”
Solon was on his feet. “He’s an agitator,” he muttered. “The Watch use them to provoke rebels.”
“We’ve got to get Galen away!” Raffi was desperate.
“You don’t know . . . You don’t understand . . .”
“The Makers lived!” Galen roared, lashing a chair aside. “And only the Order kept the world from chaos!”
Power was almost visible around him, the flames of the fire leaping up. People backed off; one man opened the door and slipped out. The stout man looked alarmed. He got up from his stool and pulled a knife.
“Who are you?”
Outside, the wind shrieked. A shutter flew open with a crash that made Raffi jump in terror. The stout man stepped back, the stool smacking over.
“You’re from the Order,” he breathed.
Galen smiled his bitter smile.
“No!” Raffi shoved forward. “Listen!” he yelled. “Everyone! Listen to the wind! It’s not just a gale. It’s like a vortex!”
As if to answer him, a blast shattered the door wide. Straw swirled, the fire flattened and roared. All the windows burst inward in an explosion of glass and wood, and Raffi felt himself flung against Galen, grabbing the keeper’s shoulder, feeling the sparks of energy as they crashed against the tables. Women screamed. Pots and dishes flew.
“It is a vortex,” Galen whispered.
16
Lands will shake, the stars fall.
The moons will plummet.
Water and fire will engage in battle.
Apocalypse of Tamar
THE VORTEX MUST HAVE STRUCK the town full on. Deep in the dim cellar, huddled among casks and barrels, Raffi suffered its fury, the terrible wind shrieking like nothing he had ever imagined, the pain of it cutting through his mind like a knife, no matter how close he hugged his arms around his head.
They were well below ground, and yet even here the crashing of walls and buildings came to them as the storm smashed whole houses and streets. Dust showered down, but the roaring terror had long drowned all talk. Some children whimpered. A girl slept, exhausted. In the dull light of two snatched oil lamps, Raffi glimpsed all their shadowy faces; dirty, tired people huddled in corners, who had managed to scramble down here when the inn roof had finally been torn clean away.
The stout man lay against one wall, holding a bloody rag to his head. They seemed to have been here forever. The noise was unbelievable; Raffi was sure nothing would be left standing. Closing his eyes he remembered briefly the smothering moths, the broken dome. That would have all gone. Galen’s fierce urge to destroy it had been fulfilled.
Turning his head, Raffi glanced over at the keeper. For him the pain must be a worse agony, screaming along the raw sense-lines, but Galen sat still, his back against the damp bricks, his gaze steady and absorbed. As usual in times of crisis he could go deep into meditation, his soul far off. For a moment Raffi let himself wonder if Galen’s rage had caused the vortex. Then he shook his head. That was stupid.
Solon sat next to him, his head pillowed on a sack. The Archkeeper looked gray and wan. He managed a smile. “Can’t last much longer,” he whispered.
An enormous crash shook the walls. A woman gasped.
“Flain help us,” someone breathed.
Suddenly bricks and stone came thumping down, a slither and thunder that made Raffi flatten himself in terror, and sent a vast cloud of choking black mortar through the cellar. For a moment he was sure the ceiling was coming in. A lamp toppled and smashed, spilling oil. Solon covered his filthy hair with his arm. “Tamar guard us,” he kept muttering. “Soren protect us.”
Slowly, the rubble slid to a stop.
The new, tilted darkness tasted of grit; Raffi spat it out, his whole body tense. This was terror; he breathed it in with the dust. It stifled his thoughts like the moths; that terror of the roof coming down, the crushing weight of the rubble above.
He curled tight, trying to think of anything else. Where was Marco? Dead, almost certainly. He imagined him, bleeding under some smashed wall. And Carys, and the Sekoi? Had the storm struck them?
He wouldn’t think about that.
And then he realized he was listening to silence.
Utter silence.
Heads raised. Solon’s prayers faded. Someone said, “It’s stopped.”
The silence was a great peace, a lifted weight. They could even hear the faintest plip of water dripping.
“Thank God,” Solon whispered.
Raffi went to stand, but Galen’s hand reached out and caught him like a vise. “It hasn’t finished,” he said, and his voice was harsh, filling the stifling space. “The center of the storm is passing over. We’re only halfway through.”
The ale-wife, Emmy, came crawling through the rubble. She was filthy, her long hair dragged out of its pins. She looked appalled. “Are you sure?”
“Certain.” Galen looked at her. “Keep the children close to the walls.”
They waited. The stout man mopped his wound. “If not the Order’s work, keeper,” he said stubbornly, “then whose? The Makers?”
Galen eyed him. “The decay of it.”
“So what can save us?”
“Faith.”
“In the Makers? They’re long gone.”
“Are they?” Galen glanced at him sidelong. “But you were right about some things. The Order are not finished. The Order will save you, despite yourselves. So will the Crow.”
As he said the word, the storm crashed back, an explosion of noise. Raffi groaned, covering his head. He lay there and endured it, knowing it was worse, louder, unbearable because a woman’s crying was mixed up in it and from some dark despair he raised his head and saw Galen had an arm around Emmy and she was sobbing endlessly, her sons clinging to her. Time ended; only the storm’s scream lived. Once Raffi thought the battering rage had lessened and he almost slept, in sheer exhaustion, and another time he wandered into delirium and knew, instantly and surely, that the Margrave was behind him, a grinning dark horror at his shoulder, as he screeched out and jerked around. But there was only Solon, looking old and somehow shriveled, rubbing at a tiny mark on his hands, over and over.
Raffi reached out and held his fingers gently.
The Archkeeper looked up abruptly. “The cells were like this,” he breathed, his voice choked.
An icy chill touched Raffi’s mind. For a moment he saw a pit of horror; clutching the old man’s fingers, he said, “This is not the cells. You’re with us now.”
Solon closed his eyes. When he opened them something had passed. He patted Raffi’s arm and managed a smile, weary and kind.
And then, infinitely later, hours later, Raffi must really have slept, because when he opened his eyes and hissed with the ache of his stiff arms, the vortex had passed, and gray daylight filled all the chinks and cracks of the cellar.
PEOPLE WERE MOVING. Galen gently eased Emmy aside and scrambled up, dust streaming from his clothes and hair. Another man joined him.
“The stairs are blocked.”
Galen nodded.
In the corner lay a great mass of rubble. The upstairs must have totally collapsed, Raffi thought in despair, but Galen had already clambered up and was tugging carefully at it. After a while he said, “I think we can get through, but it will take time.”