DDDDD ZZZZZZ // D D AAAA RRR GGGG OOOO NN N Z I NN N EEEE || D D A A R R G O O N N N Z I N N N E || Volume 18 -=========================================================+|) D D AAAA RRR G GG O O N N N Z I N N N E || Number 8 DDDDD A A R R GGGG OOOO N NN ZZZZZZ I N NN EEEE || \\ \ ======================================================================== DargonZine Distributed: 12/10/05 Volume 18, Number 8 Circulation: 647 ======================================================================== Contents Editorial Ornoth D.A. Liscomb Echoes off the Stone R. F. Niro Sy 12, 1018 Out of the Rubble 1 P. Atchley, Sy 12, 1018 Dave Fallon, and R. F. Niro ======================================================================== DargonZine is the publication vehicle of The Dargon Project, Inc., a collaborative group of aspiring fantasy writers on the Internet. We welcome new readers and writers interested in joining the project. Please address all correspondence to or visit us on the World Wide Web at http://www.dargonzine.org/, or our FTP site at ftp://users.primushost.com/members/d/a/dargon/. Issues and public discussions are posted to the Usenet newsgroup rec.mag.dargon. DargonZine 18-8, ISSN 1080-9910, (C) Copyright December, 2005 by The Dargon Project, Inc. Editor: Ornoth D.A. Liscomb , Assistant Editor: Liam Donahue . DargonZine is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs- NonCommercial License. This license allows you to make and distribute unaltered copies of DargonZine, complete with the original attributions of authorship, so long as it is not used for commercial purposes. Reproduction of issues or any portions thereof for profit is forbidden. To view a detailed copy of this license, please visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0 or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford CA, 94305 USA. ======================================================================== Editorial by Ornoth D.A. Liscomb Welcome to what appears to be the official Rich Niro issue of DargonZine. Rich had been with us for five years when he left the group this past September. During that time he printed three stories: "The Target that Eludes Me", "Spine", and "Touching Ol", a story he completed when its original author and Rich's close friend, Victor Cardoso, left the project for a while. However, having attended the 2003 Dargon Writers' Summit, Rich was also involved in the Black Idol story arc that we're currently printing. Although he's no longer an active DargonZine writer, this issue includes two of the Black Idol stories that he worked on. The first is "Echoes off the Stone". Back in 2003, when we divvied up the arc stories, Rich agreed to write the pivotal story where the barge carrying the cursed idol of Gow arrived in Dargon. Although Nick Wansbutter added some finishing touches to get it ready for printing, Echoes was largely as you see it here when Rich left the project. The three-chapter "Out of the Rubble" has a more complex history. It began life as P. Atchley's arc story, a tale about Sian Allyn and her adoptive children that showed the human side of Dargon after the barge's arrival. In fact, this first chapter is primarily Ms. Atchley's work. However, during a brief hiatus from the group, she turned the story over to Rich, who added the healer's plot that will appear in part two. The final chapter they wrote together, after Ms. Atchley had returned. However, both she and Rich had to leave the group before the stories were completed. At that point, Dave Fallon stepped in, whose "Lost Opportunity 1" you saw earlier in the arc. Because of that, "Out of the Rubble" is the first (but definitely not the last) story in DargonZine's long history to have three authors in its byline. Despite the number of times its authorship changed hands, I think you'll find it to be among the best stories in the whole Black Idol series. It also illustrates how cooperative the arc has been, and how far we've come since the 90's Beinison War, when the magazine struggled for years to recover when two key writers left the group before that arc was completed. Life events sometimes make it difficult for people to participate in Dargon's writing project. Rich is a teacher, which leaves very little time for pursuits such as writing. This year he also became head coach of his school's track team, which placed even more demands on his time. As if that wasn't enough, this summer he and his wife moved to a new house and also just had their first baby boy. Things are pretty hectic in the Niro household, which is why he left the group, but we all wish him well. Oddly, it's been that kind of year for many of our writers. Jon Evans stepped down from the Assistant Editor role after getting married and buying a new house, and his first child is due to arrive any day now. Ironically, Liam Donahue, who became Assistant Editor when Jon stepped down, has also gotten married and bought a new house! Nick Wansbutter got married and is expecting his first baby; Trey Holliday, one of our promising new writers, got engaged; Jim Owens and Rena Deutsch have also both bought new houses; and several folks have new jobs. It's undoubtedly trite to say that our writers are a family, but in many ways it's true. It's difficult to work so closely together without forming some kind of emotional bond with other people, and our annual Writers' Summits really cement those friendships into deep, lasting relationships. Looking back on 2005, our group has a lot to celebrate, both within the magazine and without. So congrats and best wishes to Rich Niro, to all our writers, and to our readers as well, as we continue the Black Idol story arc and celebrate the end of an amazing 21st year of bringing you fiction on the Internet. ======================================================================== Echoes off the Stone by R. F. Niro Sy 12, 1018 Gilvelle Marser wished he could wave his arms in mystic circles, waggle his fingers in arcane gestures, and utter words of power that would all result in the barge beneath his feet moving faster. He looked up at the mid-morning sun for what he figured was the sixth or seventh time in the past ten menes. He knew he was an architect, not a mage, though; he had no control over the forces of nature. Already, the transit upriver had taken twice as long as normal. He scowled and looked down at the water surrounding the barge. The Coldwell River, swollen by a sennight of late summer storms, flowed swiftly around the flat-bottomed craft, retarding its progress. A team of horses on the riverbank, connected to the barge by a trio of thick hawsers, strained against their harnesses to fight the current. "You're worrying again, Gil," the barge captain, Yollen Carru, said as he came to stand at the architect's side. "If it's any consolation, our float back down the river will be considerably faster than usual. Although the current will likely make the barge a little tricky to moor." "I've already waited a sennight to get out here. You'd think I could wait another half a bell to get a look at the damage. I had expected to be repairing the cracks by now." Gilvelle turned his gaze down towards the barge's captain, nearly twenty years his senior and two hands shorter, and scowled about the whole situation. Days earlier, on one of his regular inspections as Duke Clifton's chief architect, Gilvelle had spotted a large fissure in a central pylon of Dargon's 'causeway', so-called despite actually being a bridge connecting the two sides of the city by virtue of a historical quirk. The steady rains had made it impossible for a barge to navigate safely up to the causeway to assess the severity of the damage, until the sky had cleared the previous night. "We'll get there in due time. Events don't always move at the pace we'd like. I know your da' taught you something about patience." Yollen grinned, showing his jagged teeth yellowed by time. Gilvelle could not help but smile at the joke and hear the subtle barb. Yollen had been a friend of Tarell Marser, Gilvelle's father, since before Gilvelle was born. Tarell had passed away five winters back, but Gilvelle had found himself regularly using Yollen's barge as a platform from which to repair damage to the causeway after a few harsh winters. Gilvelle ran his hand through his brown, wavy hair, which was just beginning to gray at the edges. He shrugged. Before he'd taken this job, there hadn't been any trace of white. "You're right, my esteemed barge captain. I just wish I knew how bad this crack is." "It's been a rough year on the river so far," Yollen commented. "I don't think I've ever seen as bad a spring runoff, never mind this summer flood." "And if it's not the summer floods and spring thaw, and the tree trunks, and rocks and such that they carry, it's the winter ice working at the stone." Gilvelle scowled. "One of these days the damage to the causeway is going to be more than cosmetic." Before Gilvelle could respond, the barge lurched beneath his feet and he was tossed in the air. The breath exploded out of Gilvelle's lungs as he landed. For a moment, the architect lay on the deck, laboring to draw air back into his body. "Gil, are you hurt?" Yollen entered into his line of sight. At first, Gilvelle was surprised to see the barge captain still on his feet, but then he remembered that the man had spent nearly his whole life on the rolling surfaces of ships and barges. Gilvelle took stock for a moment and rose to a sitting position. He found that none of his joints protested any worse than they had when he had stepped from bed that morning. He shook his head and found it clear. "I think I'm fine. What happened?" Yollen shrugged, the creases on his forehead easing up. He looked around the barge. "One of our hawsers slipped. We've been having trouble with them all morning," Yollen said. The older man pointed to one of the thick ropes that had suddenly gone slack between the barge and shore and was dipping into the reeds at the water's edge. "You sure you're alright?" "Yes, yes. I'll be fine." Gilvelle wasn't completely sure, but took his friend's proffered hand and rose unsteadily to his feet. "Yollen, I'm fine. Really. Is everyone else alright?" "They seem fine." Yollen motioned towards Gilvelle's three masons, who were picking themselves up off the deck and dusting themselves off. Adjarn, the leader of the trio, waved reassuringly when he saw the two men looking his way. Yollen returned the wave. Turning back to Gilvelle, he said, "I'm going to see what we can do with those ropes. Cjan needs to do better work than that. I won't have Dargon's chief architect maimed on my barge, if I can help it. That wouldn't be very good for business." "No, I guess it wouldn't," the architect chuckled. "Just don't be hard on the lad." "Don't worry, he has only been with me for three fortnights; the current today is a new challenge for him. He just needs some encouragement and a gentle reminder." Yollen strode off towards three of his crewmen. Gilvelle watched the barge captain's progress, giving himself time to collect his wits. As Yollen approached the barge men, who were talking amongst themselves, the youngest of the three, probably not twenty winters old, pointed at the line which snaked over the bow of the boat and wound around a stout post. As the young man gestured, he said something to Yollen that Gilvelle couldn't hear. The youngster brushed back the blond hair that fell over his eyes and glanced quickly in Gilvelle's direction. While Gilvelle watched, Yollen dismissed the other two crewmen and cupped his hand around the back of the youngster's neck and leaned in to talk. Again, Gilvelle couldn't hear anything that was said, but he could tell from the crewman's posture that his captain was giving one of his typical speeches, likely the one on the importance of details. Many times over the years, Gilvelle had heard him present different versions of the same speech. After a mene of discussion, Yollen gave the sailor a strong pat on the back and the two began inspecting the loose hawser, tracing its length back towards the bow. Gilvelle considered his friend. Yollen had a reputation at the docks for taking crewmembers that few other captains would have and molding them into competent sailors. He was known to be tough but fair with these perennial losers. Few of them had betrayed his trust or misused the opportunity he gave them. When it came down to it, Gilvelle could be sure that the young man would do his best to ensure that the hawser would not slip again. The chief architect turned back towards the causeway to run through the steps they'd take for assessing the damage to the pylon and the steps they'd take to repair it. Gilvelle liked to plan for every contingency. "What's that, in the reeds?!" Yollen yelled. Gilvelle spun in response to the shout. He was in time to see the barge captain, with remarkable agility for a man of his age, take three quick strides to reach the port side. Yollen waved at the teamsters on the riverbank and pointed at an indistinct shape drifting in the thick weeds along the water's edge on the commercial side of the city, close to where the hawser dangled. As Gilvelle watched, one of the men crossed behind the horses and carefully ascended the muddy slope to the shoreline. The man stopped abruptly at the water's edge. He stood staring at the shape for several moments then backed up unsteadily. "Ol's balls, it's a body," he yelled. Another of the teamsters approached and looked into the reeds. "He's dead, that's for certes. Looks to've been floating in here for a while. Captain, what do we do with it?" Even from the barge, Gilvelle caught a scent of the decay. He fought back the gag reflex with a strong swallow. "Send one of your men for the guard," Yollen called back. "It's not our problem to solve; it's theirs." The man nodded at the advice, but looked at the body one more time before he departed. "He's only got one arm." Gilvelle's breath caught in his throat and he glanced up to see the same shock registering on the barge crewmen's, his masons', and the teamsters' faces. A young bargeman, his face ashen, came to Gilvelle's side. "The duke's been away from the city for more'n a sennight. Could this be --?" "He can't be dead. It couldn't be him. A one-armed body in the river means nothing." Gilvelle and Yollen stood at the stern of the barge, which was now moored inside one of the central arches of Dargon's causeway. In the bell that followed, Yollen's barge crew had anchored the barge and Gilvelle's three masons had begun to assemble a low scaffolding on the footing of the bridge's pylon. "Aye, probably, but people like the sensational." Yollen pointed up. A murmur from the crowd on the causeway above reminded Gilvelle that the barge crew and the masons were not the only ones who were interested in the body. With a sigh, Gilvelle tilted his head to get a glimpse of the throng that had assembled on top of the causeway. He could see a few of its foremost members leaning over the stonework edges, raising their fists in excitement. Behind them, he suspected he would have found other, more fearful souls wringing their hands with anxiety. He was glad that he could not hear their actual words. There was little worse than doing your job with an audience. "This mob isn't helping," Gilvelle said. "Quite a scene." The barge captain nodded. "You'd think this was the Melrin festival, with all the people who've come out. Can you blame them, after a sennight of rain?" The captain waved to the throngs above. "And a crowd is what you'll get when people think there's a chance Duke Clifton might be dead." Gilvelle looked up again to see some of the crowd wave back. Happily, most of the spontaneous gathering was focusing on the guardsmen half a furlong upriver, but a few found the work on the barge equally interesting. Turning his own gaze upriver, Gilvelle saw a trio of guardsmen leaning out of a small boat, trying to fish the body from within the dense reeds on the commercial side of the river. As had been consistently happening for the past twenty menes, when the men tried to lever the corpse into the boat, it became snagged in the plants and was pulled from their grasp by a strong eddy. Beyond the three men, another guard stood on the river bank, his hands on his hips. His disgust was clearly evident. Gilvelle grumbled again. "They're not making my job any easier. If they'd finish what they're doing, we'd all be better off. This distraction is putting us further behind schedule." "Have you ever tried to pull a bloated corpse from a raging river?" Yollen grinned. "At least Sergeant Cepero had the good sense to send a half dozen of his men up to the causeway to try to keep some order." "Don't try to make light of the situation. This is your fault, old man. Your eyes are too sharp for your age." Gilvelle shook his head in frustration. "How long do you think it'll take them to identify the body?" "I suspect it would be difficult to tell who the person is. He has likely been dead for a day or more. It's up to the guards to figure all of that out," Yollen shrugged. "I talked to Lansing last sennight when I reported this damage." Gilvelle said. Lansing Bartol, a bard and Duke Clifton Dargon's good friend, was overseeing the city in the duke's absence. Gilvelle thought of his patron and silently hoped for the best. "He said the duke would be away for some time, but didn't mention why." The barge man raised his eyebrows at Gilvelle's comment. Gilvelle decided not to pursue the subject any further. "Yollen, I'm going to check on Adjarn. It's about time we take a look at the cracks." Gilvelle finished speaking and strode to the pylon side of the barge. The younger pair of the masons were standing on the scaffolding, fastening boards to the uppermost of the two tiers. Adjarn supervised from the barge's deck. Gilvelle gently grabbed his chief mason's arm. "How does it look?" "Still not sure, chief," the stout man said, turning to the engineer. "Why don't we hop up and take a look?" Adjarn used the wooden slats of the assembly as steps and began hoisting himself off the rolling surface of the barge. The thick mason, just a few years younger than Gilvelle, moved his bulk up the two levels seemingly without effort. Gilvelle quickly mimicked the man's motions. The workspace, made of roughly hewn boards, only shook slightly as they climbed. Gilvelle was pleased with the workmanship and also happy that his job as the city's main architect kept him active enough so that the ascent did not wind him. "Good work so far," Gilvelle said to the two apprentice masons as he reached the lower platform. The two were standing at the outside edge of the scaffolding when Adjarn and Gilvelle arrived. Byale, a tall and gangly blond man, and Emmela, a dark-haired and dimpled girl, smiled at the compliment. The apprentices waited until the older men stepped out of their way and then descended back to the barge, likely to get the masonry tools. Gilvelle surveyed the pylon, looking over the damage. He saw that there were three cracks, not just one. The highest fissure was also the largest and the one he had seen on his survey. "What do you think?" he asked his chief mason after a moment. "The two smaller cracks should patch easily." Adjarn gestured at a pair of two-to-three cubit long gouges in the masonry, both nearly level with the floor of the scaffolding. "The top one looks deeper and we don't have a great angle to see from here. I can't tell." Gilvelle followed Adjarn's gaze up to the crack a cubit above their heads. It was over twice as long as the two smaller slits and ran nearly halfway across the bridge support. He could tell from where he stood that it sloped downwards. "That crack is pretty high up," Gilvelle commented, as much to himself as to the stonemason. Most scrapes in the masonry appeared lower, where barges regularly hit the supports on their travels to Dargon's docks. "I know, Gil. It's likely a frost crack we didn't see during our spring inspection. The waters have been pretty high and could have been working at it. The floods have been carrying an incredible amount of debris, too. The rainwater pouring off the causeway could have washed away damaged stone and widened the opening. You know it's hard to say exactly what causes any crack." "Aye." Gilvelle nodded. He didn't always need to know the causes; his job was to treat the results. "Do you think it reaches the fill in the middle?" "I don't know." The stout and swarthy mason shrugged, flexing his bull-like neck and huge arms with the motion. "It's one of the biggest cracks I've ever seen, but I think I'm going to have to go up another level to get a good look into it." "If water gets into the fill and begins to erode the mixture we could have a serious problem on our hands. The spans on either side could be putting their weight on an increasingly empty chamber." "Gil, why do you always have to consider the worst prospects in any situation?" Adjarn smiled lopsidedly at him. "You know that's my job. Duke Clifton has given me the responsibility of keeping all his holdings in good shape." "I do know that, but the pylon collapsing isn't too likely." Adjarn smiled again warmly and began mounting the rungs to the next level. "You know, chief, when I told my little ones I would be working on the causeway today, they were worried about me. They're convinced that an uayab lives under all bridges and that it'd steal me and eat me for dinner." Gilvelle pursed his lips. He could not understand why anyone would want to deal with the kind of uncertainty and confusion that having children brought to someone's life. He knew Adjarn was a dedicated father who loved his three small children dearly, though, so he humored his friend. "What did you tell them?" "I told them the truth. I told them ..." Adjarn stopped speaking for a moment as he lay down on the planks to slide his hand into the crevice. From where Gilvelle stood, he could only see him get his fingers halfway in. "... that there was no uayab under the causeway because the river is too deep for uayabs to live in. I explained that uayabs only live under bridges that cover small streams. They like to be able to reach their tentacles from the shallow water onto the bridge top." Gilvelle shook his head in wonder. He was glad he wouldn't have to deal with children of his own. Long ago he'd decided that he would remain committed to his job. To do it right, he needed to devote all of his time and energy. "It's deep, chief. I can't find the back edge. It is rough enough that mortar should hold well, though," Adjarn said after a moment. "How long will it take to repair?" Adjarn was quiet for a moment. "It'll take us about a bell to patch the smaller ones. Probably another one or two to fill this gap. I'll do it myself. We should be back to shore in less than three bells," he said. Gilvelle scowled. That would take them well into the afternoon. He probably would still make it to down to the docks before dark, but it would be late before he could reach the keep and give a report. "Alright, do what you can," he told the mason. In response, Adjarn leaned over and began instructing Byale and Emmela about the mortar and tools they would need to fix the crack. Leaving Adjarn to his job, Gilvelle stepped over and put his hand against the uneven surface of the pylon. The stone was rough to his touch, some of the texture from its original quarrying, while other pockmarks showed the handiwork of the seasons. It was cold under his palm. He pulled his hand away. "Too bad," he thought. "It would have been nice to know if the bridge was worn out or still strong and vital." "Chief, a Bit for your thoughts," Adjarn said, patting Gilvelle's shoulder. The chief architect had not heard the mason descend. "Sorry. I was just wondering how many more years this bridge will stand." Gilvelle turned away from the pylon. "Plenty more, if you and I have anything to say about it. It's weathered uncountable days and likely will see many more after both you and I are gone." Adjarn laughed. "I know," Gilvelle turned to his friend. "But nothing lasts forever. What, finally, will bring the stone and the magic of this bridge crumbling down into the river?" Adjarn opened his mouth, as if to give one of his regular jovial replies, but looked at Gilvelle and stopped. Then he became pensive. "That's a tough question, chief. It's like asking what happens to us after our time on Makdiar is done. How can we know? I know some of the religions think there's a better place after this. I'm not so sure. I'd love to just end up having some of my pieces become part of stone like this." Adjarn patted the causeway pylon. The two men stood quietly for another mene. Gilvelle watched the two apprentices passing tools up to the lowest level of the scaffolding. He could hear the whole array of human noises from the causeway over their head: calls of greeting, grunts of assent or dissent, coughs of annoyance. Emmela called up that they were ready to begin patching. "Adjarn, I'll leave you to your work," Gilvelle said. "I'll be down on the deck if you need me." Gilvelle turned around and climbed down from the scaffolding. Once he was standing on the barge surface again, his job done for the moment, Gilvelle looked upriver. In the distance he could see a number of good-sized barges carrying goods and passengers down the river towards the causeway. "How does the work look?" Yollen asked, approaching and breaking into Gilvelle's thoughts. "With the water running so high and fast, I'd expect that the daily barge rush will be beginning soon. That could make the work here a little trickier for you." Gilvelle nodded in agreement. "What's one more complication among many? Besides, barges passing by while we work is at least a complication we're well used to," the chief architect said, trying to sound cheerful. The afternoon was the busiest time for traffic to Dargon. If they were close enough, most barge captains would sail into the evening and land in Dargon for a night at its taverns. If they couldn't make it by dark, the river barges tied up outside of Dargon at one of the camps and arrived the next day. "Adjarn says at least two bells or so of work. That last crack is deep." "If it's any help, the guard finally fished the body out of the river while you were up with Adjarn," Yollen said. "They took it away, likely to the guardhouse." "Did Sergeant Cepero seem worried when he left?" Gilvelle asked. "Couldn't say, really. Seemed his normal self, but left with a pair of his men with the cart fairly quick," Yollen replied, looking up. Gilvelle followed Yollen's gaze to the brilliantly blue sky, seeing a flock of screegulls wheeling aimlessly overhead, occasionally passing between them and the glowing orb of the sun. As the two men looked on, a wayward bird flew into the side of the causeway, offered a confused cry, and limply plummeted thirty cubits to the water below. "You don't see that everyday," Yollen said. The chief architect grunted a noncommittal response. He was watching the bird's body carried away by the swift running river. It did a single spin in a small eddy before sinking beneath the surface. "Look out!" Yollen said. Gilvelle turned to see the man still looking up. The barge captain stepped back nimbly. The movement was just in time, as a watery mass from above landed where he had been standing and soaked Gilvelle. The architect sputtered in confusion, using his sleeves to wipe the mess from his eyes. When he was able to look down at himself, he found his left shoulder and arm soaked with a lumpy and watery mixture that disturbingly resembled vomit. The warmth was disgusting and the cloying smell even worse. Gilvelle's fears were confirmed when he looked up to see that a green-faced man was sheepishly waving what looked like an apology down at him. "Let me get you some rags." Yollen ambled over to the small shack situated on the port side stern of the barge and went in. Gil sighed again and looked back down at his clothing. He splashed water on himself from the river in an attempt to clean off the vomit and wished the day would end. A short distance upriver, the large barge he'd seen earlier turned slightly so that it would pass beneath one of the arches of the causeway. The fifth bell of day rang out from the Harbormaster's Building. Between the loud rings, Gilvelle heard the bleating of a flock of sheep, along with a change in smoothness of the river water flowing past their barge. A heartbeat after these things registered in his mind, Adjarn shouted, "Chief, we've got trouble!" Yollen, leaving from the shack with an arm full of rags, yelled. "Ol's balls! She's gonna hit, and fast." Gilvelle looked up and gaped at what he saw. The incoming barge, men and women scrambling all over its deck, was sliding sideways towards the pylon on which they worked. Gilvelle saw that the unwieldy craft was reinforced at the corners with stout brackets of metal. The crew were working hard to keep it away, but Gilvelle could already tell from its speed that it was too late. "Adjarn, get down!" Gilvelle jumped towards his masons. He could hear Yollen bellowing orders to his crew. The barge struck the causeway support with a tremendous crash. The thunder of splintering wood and the shriek of metal scraping against rock echoed off the causeway. Gilvelle was thrown off his feet. He landed on his hands and knees. He could tell that both his palms and legs earned serious scrapes from the fall. As he caught himself, his analytical mind took in the sights around him. The wayward barge was doomed. The front end stopped suddenly, while the back end continued its forward thrust. The middle was forced upwards, buckling the barge and tearing it into two pieces. The collision was even more catastrophic for the causeway. Gilvelle watched the pylon shudder with the impact. The initial concussion caused the stonework of the support to bulge and shake, destroying the scaffolding attached to it. Adjarn and his two apprentices were tossed into the churning river water. Gilvelle tried to watch where they went after that, but lost track of them in the chaos. They were not the only debris in the air. He turned back to see the damaged arch cracking at multiple points, disintegrating. The upriver half of the stone pylon toppled. Gilvelle realized the causeway was going to collapse. He rolled over and hopped to his feet. He immediately saw that Yollen had come to the same conclusion. He and one of his men hastily sawed at the lines that held their anchor ropes in place. One anchor released easily, but the other resisted. The final ropes began to split, but not before the toppling pillar destroyed the integrity of the arch over their heads. The bridge fell around them. The architect started to run, but quickly realized there was nowhere to go. He looked around to find a wake caused by the crashing debris approaching. It threw the inward side of their barge into the air. He was tossed and landed on his back again. He saw chunks of stone descending towards him. He covered his head, but felt the barge beginning to spin around the remaining front anchor. The wake that threw him to the deck must have set them in motion, he realized. The first stones crashed into the river where their barge had been only a moment earlier. Rocks plunged towards the river and barge, one of the pieces of masonry smashing the starboard side of the craft. It shuddered with the impact and the sound of splintering wood peppered the chief architect. "We're not moving fast enough," Gilvelle thought. He found himself rolled against the port side of the barge, crashing into the gunwale and then into the small cabin. His shoulder ached from the impact, but the pain was secondary to his fear. There was so much noise that Gilvelle could not pick out any one sound to focus on. He could see more stonework, pulled down as pieces of the span fell, striking the water in huge plumes of spray, seemingly all around them. He tensed as he saw the front half of the pillar topple over sideways, landing on the remains of the bow of the other barge, shattering it even further. At that moment, Gilvelle felt sunlight on his face again. Yollen's vessel had pivoted around the one last down-river anchor rope, coming out from under the rain of rubble. Gilvelle tried to stand, but found he could not as the barge continued its wild spin. From his prone position, Gilvelle saw moving shapes within the falling stonework. "The crowd on the bridge," he remembered. "Oh Stevene, they were trapped in this!" He saw people plummeting with the rubble, others hanging and calling loudly, panic coloring their voices as they dangled, and some scrambling on the edges of the gap created in one of the center spans in the bridge. Where were the others? Gilvelle looked around frantically for Yollen. He was amazed to see the old man, legs spread wide to compensate for the barge's jarring motion, still yelling orders at a pair of the boat's crew. These two scrambled on their hands and knees to finish cutting the last anchor line. Downstream, he saw heads bobbing in the water, clinging to a piece of wood from one of the barges. He hoped they were his masons. The last anchor rope finally separated and the barge slid away from the wounded causeway. Gilvelle rolled again at the new motion. He braced his prone form between the wall of the shack and the side of the boat as it bucked beneath him. After a few moments, the craft steadied. Gilvelle caught his breath, checking his body for serious damage. Relieved to find that he didn't have any injuries worse than cuts and bruises, he began to lever himself to his feet. He had only partially completed this maneuver when he heard a resounding crunch as the barge struck something solid. The sudden stop flipped Gilvelle onto his back, the pain causing him to exhale sharply. He felt as though he's been pounded in the back with a great hammer and he gasped in short bits of air. Catching his breath once again, he looked up to find that the current paired with the eddies caused by the bridge collapse had sent the barge off towards shore, where it had struck a sand bar and beached on the commercial side of the city, well below the causeway, near the swamp. Gilvelle leapt to his feet, ignoring the protests of his not-so-young body. He saw that Yollen was still standing and he and his crew were working to secure the barge. The engineer found himself frozen in place. He didn't know what to do. A thousand courses of action ran through his mind. He couldn't decide on any one of them. All he could feel was shock and disbelief. How could this have happened? Was it his fault? What could he do to help? He realized immediately that he was just one of many people caught up in this tragedy. "Gil, are you alright?" Yollen called, coming over to stand next to him. "I'm in one piece, at least," the chief architect said, trying to shake the confusion out of his head. "I need to find Adjarn and the others." He looked downriver. "There's nothing you can do. The river's running too fast. You'll never be able to catch up with them on foot before they reach the harbor. We can only hope that someone down at the docks sees them and helps." Yollen rubbed his beard. "I'll send a man down to try to find them." Gilvelle nodded. Yollen was right. As the man turned and called to one of his crewmen, Gilvelle realized that he still didn't know what to do. He started forward and, then stopped. "I'm going back to the causeway," he said to the barge captain. This time he started forward and didn't stop. Gilvelle jumped over the side of the barge and began running the furlong back upriver. The riverbank soil shifted under his feet as he ran. At one point, it caused him to stumble, his bent knee leaving an impression behind in the beach detritus. He could see the panicked crowd, the mass resolving itself into individuals as he got closer. Most surged away from the broken spans straddling the middle of the bridge, while others, mostly guardsmen, fought against the tide of people. Some of the city guard had already been present when the crash had happened. Gilvelle reached the end of the causeway, where the crowd was still milling about. He turned sideways to move by an old man making a gesture of supplication to Ol. He passed a woman who turned in slow circles calling out for her husband or son, tears streaming down her face. Gilvelle slid through more breaks in the chaos to reach the edge of the bridge. Jumping up on the raised, narrow stonework that lined the side of the causeway, he increased his speed again, starting to struggle for breath. An errant elbow almost took him out at the knees, but like a young swordsman, he jumped over the offending limb and kept his forward progress. He didn't know what he could do to help, but the blood surged through his veins and kept him moving. The crowd began to thin after only a dozen cubits and he leapt from the stonework back onto the bridge spans. It took him another thirty or so strides before he reached the gathering at the edge of the damage. As he approached, he could tell that in the ten menes since the crash, the guardsmen had already been hard at work. Gilvelle grabbed the one of the guard. "What can I do?" "You can tell us if the rest of the causeway is stable. We've already got a lot of rescuers up here and down below," the man said. Sensing the urgency in the other man's tone, Gilvelle immediately went to work, surveying the scene. The crash had left a gap of thirty or forty cubits on the upriver side of the bridge. He studied the span across the way. The stone had broken halfway between two of the pylons and left a large hanging ledge. The exposed side of the causeway surface was rife with cracks, and pieces fell off as the chief architect watched. The support behind it looked secure, though, showing no major surface damage. Gilvelle turned his attention to the near edge, under his feet. It was cracked and jagged in places, but had crumbled close to another support and hardly any dangled over the gap. What remained in between, a quarter of the original width, at the most, was cracked and looked none too secure. As he watched, a guardsman carefully moved out a few cubits onto the strip, cautiously navigating the broken stone as he tugged the end of a rope along. He made his report to the guardsman he had spoken with earlier and finished with, "I can't tell the state of the pillar beneath our feet. I will need to look." "Will the remaining causeway hold someone's weight?" the guard asked. "That's hard to say. Long term, I don't think it's secure, but I think it could hold people for now." Gilvelle made his best guess, hoping that he wasn't wrong. "I'll get my men to clear the other side." He grabbed one of the other guardsmen, a slender young soldier, wide-eyed at the situation, and explained what needed to be done. The boy saluted, hopped up on the remaining span, and nimbly loped across, taking care to keep his balance on the damaged roadway. Gilvelle held his breath the entire time it took the man to cross the gap. "I need to go out there, too," Gilvelle said. "Be careful. We've lost too many already today." Gilvelle paused at the jagged end of the causeway, remembering it as it had been: a masterpiece of stonework. It had stood for centuries as a testament to the effort that its construction had taken. It had been his job to maintain it. He forced the thought away. He looked over the edge at the chaos below. He knew that in this section of the river the water was deep, but not so deep that the debris would be completely submerged. The causeway had been located here in order to take advantage of the gradual slope of the shore. In the middle, though, the bottom was over twenty cubits down. Stone blocks were scattered around the remaining half of the former pylon, likely resting on the edges of its footing. Gilvelle knew that the base of each pillar sloped down towards the bottom, leaving enough clearance for shallow-draft vessels like barges. Amid the piles were trapped townspeople, some waving frantically. Around them climbed the first rescuers. Already the guardsmen had commandeered another barge that had been coming downriver, and were positioning it as a platform for rescue operations. Some of the rescuers even swam around, diving under the surface. They seemed to be looking for people trapped underwater. Gilvelle tried to ignore the screams for help and tense commands of the rescuers. The workers moved with a definite intensity and economy of motion. Gilvelle reminded himself that another falling section could injure searchers as well as the already trapped. The chaos felt surreal to Gilvelle. Not a half bell ago it had been just another normal day in Dargon, albeit an ill-fated one. Now, it was anything but normal. Gilvelle decided he needed to continue his work, taking a tentative step onto the damaged bridge span. He took another stride, avoiding a deep crack in the stone. Inhaling deeply, he decided he needed to move faster; there could be lives at stake, both those below and those above. Focusing on the task at hand, he moved out ten cubits and looked back at the support. He became worried immediately. From where Gilvelle stood, he realized his initial assessment had been wrong. He could see stone crumbling from a partially hidden crack at the top of the supporting pillar. He got even more worried as he watched a larger chunk begin to slide from the top of the support. Gilvelle jumped into action, running back towards the guards trying to manage the crowd. "Get them back! Move back!" he yelled as he ran, waving his arms frantically. A loud pop echoed from the top of the bridge support. Another large chunk of upriver roadway slid off. Below, he could see rescuers jumping into the water or scrambling over the pile of rubble from the fallen support to get out from under it. That was when Gilvelle saw his own danger. He was approaching the edge when the rock began its plunge, shaking the bridge as it let loose. The causeway groaned and rocked beneath his feet and Gilvelle was tossed into the air. He desperately grabbed the stonework rail in order to keep from pitching off the side of the bridge. His fingers and feet found purchase and he held himself in place with tensed muscles. After a huge splash from below, the architect was able to raise himself back up and peer into the gap. He was pleased to see that while the support had taken more damage, it seemed to have retained most of its integrity. The falling piece had left a jagged, but less damaged edge. He saw cracks near the base of the support, but above the water line. None of them seemed exceedingly deep, but they would require attention before too long. "I think it will hold, at least for now. It will need repair, but as long as it isn't hit again or we don't get another bad storm in the next few bells, we're alright," the chief architect said as he returned to the guardsman. Gilvelle and walked off the causeway. He felt like he was walking through a dream as the calls of the rescuers and the shouts from the city all faded into the background noise. He found himself walking on the small, sandy beach that he'd run across earlier. The area was now being used to treat the first injuries from the crash. He stopped next to a healer who was wrapping the discolored ankle of a young man, who looked like a drowned rat. The healer offered the architect a small, sad smile, barely a lifting of one corner of his mouth. Gilvelle moved on. Gilvelle could see Yollen's barge beached downstream, near the end of Dock Street. He walked by a number of people sitting or lying on the sand. One of them was a mother holding a baby's body tenderly, crying. Another healer came over and put his hand on the baby's forehead and then shook his head at the woman. The woman opened her mouth in a silent shriek. Gilvelle turned away. Gilvelle found himself looking back towards the remains of the causeway, where not even a bell earlier he had been standing on the barge. As he watched the rescue effort on the river, a survivor crawled out of the rock pile, a half dozen men prying up a boulder that had pinned him in the rubble. Collapsing after only a few feet, the man was quickly lifted and passed to a barge for treatment by healers. "Hey, can you help me carry this guy?" A guardsman grabbed Gilvelle's arm, motioning to a boat pulled up on the sand. A man's body was draped over the gunwale. Gilvelle nodded and came around the side of the small craft, sloshing through ankle deep water. He realized immediately that the man was beyond help, his chest crushed and bloodied. Gilvelle and the guard carried the man to the back of the beach and onto a strip of grass. They had started a pile that would grow as the afternoon continued. Nearly two bells later, Gilvelle was back on the roadway next to the causeway when Yollen called to him. The engineer had been staring at the reflection of the bridge in the rippling water of the river when he heard the familiar voice. "Gil," Yollen came to stand beside him. "I've been looking for you. "I've got something you need to see." As the barge captain put his hand on his shoulder, Gilvelle realized that he smelled terrible. His clothes reeked of a mixture of sweat, stone dust, blood, and bells-old vomit. Gilvelle looked around slowly, finding himself too exhausted and sore to do much else. "Where?" Yollen pointed up to a small, horse-drawn cart waiting further up the roadway. Yollen began walking towards it and Gilvelle followed behind. He could see an indistinct shape covered by a blanket in the back. They were still a dozen cubits away when Gilvelle realized what it was. "Who is it?" "I'm sorry, Gil." A tear trailed down Yollen's cheek. "It's Adjarn. I thought you'd want to be the one to bring him home to his wife." Gilvelle stood still. He knew he should cry, but he felt nothing but the same emptiness he'd felt all afternoon. Finally, he walked over and put his hand on the blanket. At the same time, he realized that in a few days thoughts of the good-natured stoneworker would bring grief as well as emptiness. "His body turned up a short ways downriver and was picked up by one of the boats that came to help. He likely never felt a thing when the stone crushed him," Yollen said, putting his hand on his Gilvelle's shoulder. "What about Emmela and Byale?" Gilvelle knew he needed some good news. "And your crew?" "The two apprentices were pulled from the river by the docks. I made sure that they found a ride into town. After their ordeal, I didn't want them walking home," Yollen answered. "Only one of my men was hurt. Cjan was thrown overboard, but swam ashore. His arm was broken, but a healer splinted it and he will be mended in a few months time. He fared much better than a lot of people." "If only there hadn't been a crowd on the causeway when it was hit. How many people do you think were lost?" "Many dozens, likely ... but it'll be some time before we know the full count." "I don't know." Gilvelle felt confused by all the events, but knew that the accident should not have happened. "I've been working with stone for decades and I'm telling you that support shouldn't have split like that. It was weak, yes, but not that brittle." "Aye, I've seen plenty of barges hit her, maybe even one or two of my own, and I've never seen anything like that. Maybe conditions were just right. Maybe there was something more going on." "Like what?" Gilvelle looked at the old man questioningly. "I don't know. That's for the priests and soothsayers to say, but all my old bones tell me is that this wasn't something natural." "You can't know that, old man." "No, I can't, but I see in your eyes that you suspect the same thing. All your experience as a builder tells you that this shouldn't have happened." The old barge master turned to look at him. "My background as an engineer tells me that it had to have natural causes." Gilvelle paused for a moment. "In which case, what if I could have prevented this? What if we had started the repairs earlier?" "'What ifs' do no good. I don't think there was anything you could do. I suspect this was out of your hands, as skilled as they are." "Straight. Understanding is not as important as acceptance. We may never know what happened." Gilvelle crossed his arms across his chest. "We need to move on from here." "What are you going to do, Gil?" "What I can. I'm going to take one step at a time, my friend. I already sent out a call for masons and any mages that are interested in trying out for the job." Gilvelle turned to see his friend studying him with a quizzical expression. "I already have a barge and captain in mind." "Aye, lad, I would be honored, but I think you'll need more than one barge. Mine will need a lot of work before it's ready to ply the river again." Yollen rubbed his beard. "Barges are going to be at a premium. I have already contacted a few friends about leasing theirs and their crews. Every one that can be spared will be needed to keep trade flowing between the two sides of the city until the causeway is repaired. When do you want to start planning?" "Tomorrow. Sergeant Cepero says the guard is going to keep men at both ends of the causeway tonight. Let's take Adjarn home and then find ourselves a quiet inn in which to toast to our friend." Gilvelle felt the first tear slide down his cheek. ======================================================================== Out of the Rubble Part 1 by P. Atchley, Dave Fallon, and R. F. Niro , , and Sy 12, 1018 "That's not fair!" "So what?" Oriel recognized the voices as those of Briam and Finn as she turned the corner of the house on Murson Street. Her excitement fled as she stopped and took in the scene. The boys stood less than two cubits apart glaring at each other, both shaking with anger. Briam, the shorter and stockier boy, had his fists clenched at his sides. His brown eyes shone with anger. A strand of his chestnut hair had fallen towards his nose, serving to emphasize the vein that stood out on his forehead. Finn was waving his hands in the air. He was half a head taller, but so slight that he looked small compared to Briam. A fleck of spittle trailed from the corner of Finn's clenched jaw. Oriel had been so happy before she rounded the corner. Mayda, the cook at Dargon Keep to whom she had been apprenticed, had given her the afternoon off to spend with her adoptive family. On the way home, Oriel had heard news that she wanted to share with Briam and Finn. The two boys started arguing again before Oriel could make her presence known. "It's a dumb game! You made it up," Briam said. "It's better than your favorite game: find-the-rat." Both paused to catch their breath. Oriel was about to jump in when another voice, one that spoke with authority, broke in. "Briam! Finn! What is going on here?" Sian Allyn, their guardian, stood on the small porch of the house, her hands on her hips, and her hazel eyes ablaze. Kerith, the youngest of the orphans, hung onto the back of Sian's skirt and peeked around her side. Oriel could tell from the dirt streaking the seven year-old's face that she had been crying, probably chased inside by the boys' argument. "I'm waiting, boys. Which one of you is going to tell me what's going on here?" Although she was always kind to them, Sian didn't hesitate to scold. In the past few fortnights she had been using that tone often, always directed at Briam and Finn. The last time Oriel had been at home she'd heard Sian tell Tom Madden, their neighbor, that they were like two young bulls butting heads. Oriel found it difficult to bear, because Briam was her closest friend in the world, and Finn always made her laugh. Sian continued, "Finn, you're older; you speak first. Then Briam, you'll get your chance to have your say. If either of you speaks out of turn, you'll be doing everyone's chores for a sennight and I might even make up some new, entirely unpleasant ones. Am I understood?" "Yes, ma'am," both boys replied in unison. "Finn." Sian crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back to listen. Oriel walked over and stood next to Kerith, putting her arm around the younger girl, as Finn prepared to speak. In a rush, Finn said, "We were playing the new game I made up. It's called 'Reach the Keep'. One person gets to be a guard. He stands in the keep." He pointed at a large square scratched in the dirt. "He closes his eyes and the other people try to sneak up on him. If he hears them, he has to point at them. If he catches someone, the person has to go all the way out of the yard to start again. If the sneak reaches the keep, he gets to become the guard and make a new rule for the game. The only rule that's not allowed is for the guard to open his eyes. "Briam was the guard and I crawled around from Tom Madden's yard without him hearing me and reached the keep. Briam got mad when I made a new rule, but that's the game." Sian turned to Briam. "Is that true?" Briam looked down at the ground, kicking the dirt with his foot. "Yes, we were playing his dumb game, but his rule was that I had to hop on one leg from now on. Kerith got to run, but I had to hop. That's not fair!" "He doesn't play fair either!" Finn broke in. "You're supposed to sneak up on the guard, but all Briam does is wait in one place until a wagon comes by and I can't hear, and then he runs as fast as he can into the keep before I can point at him. That's not how you're supposed to do it." Briam's response was instantaneous. "Your game is dumb. I can run if I want to. You're just mad that I'm faster than you." "I can run further --" "Enough!" Sian snapped. "What am I going to do with you two?" She looked off into the distance for a moment before turning back. "This has to stop. Both of you were wrong. Finn, you must be fair to everyone or no one will want to play with you. If you make a rule, it must apply to everyone. How would you feel if someone made a rule just against you?" Turning to the stouter boy, she said, "Briam, if it is Finn's game, he makes the rules. If you want to play with him, you must obey them. If you don't agree with them, getting angry isn't going to solve the problem. You need to come to me, or stop and ask Finn how he would feel if the rule was only for him." Both boys nodded sullenly. "Now," she continued, "both of you are going to do all of the chores together for the next four days. If this behavior continues, I'm going to increase your work until you have absolutely no time to play. Is that clear?" Again, both boys nodded. Oriel could tell that neither was happy with the situation, but arguing with Sian would only make the penalty worse. "Your first task will be to go with the girls to the market and fill my orders. You will get no extra money and must come straight back." Sian turned to the two girls. "Oriel, what brings you home today? It's good to see you." Oriel explained how Mayda had let her go for the day. She omitted the news she'd heard on the street, feeling guilty about it, but after seeing Sian so mad she told herself that she was afraid of what Sian would say about gossiping. "Would you go to the market with the boys and Kerith?" Sian asked. "Yes!" "Finn, you are in charge of Kerith for the day. You're the oldest and you have to take care of all of them, straight?" Sian gave Finn a stern look. "Straight." Finn grinned. He always managed to shrug off rebukes quickly. Sian shook her head with a wry smile and handed some money to Oriel, who repeated the list of items to buy. "Be sure to get fennel and verjuice, and Jur-fish for dinner tonight." "Mayda says you can't eat the inside parts of the Jur-fish." Oriel winced as the words came out of her mouth. The last time she'd been home, Sian had voiced her frustration with Oriel's new habit of prefacing most of her statements with "Mayda says". Thankfully, Sian didn't seem to notice this time. "Straight. Run along now. Be back at midday for lunch." "Can we have leftwiches for lunch, please?" Kerith asked. "Is there any bread?" Oriel asked. "I could help make some." "Sian baked some this morning," Kerith said. "Thank you for the offer, Oriel, but you can go with the others to the market." She looked at each child appraisingly for a moment, and then turned and headed back into the house. The three older children loped off together, followed by the little girl. Predictably, it was Briam who slowed down and Oriel who held out a hand to Kerith. Finn only paused when he realized that no one was right behind him. As they rounded the corner out of sight of the house, Oriel let the pent up excitement inside of her bubble out. "Briam, Finn, do you want to know what I heard on my way from the keep? I heard that they found a dead body in the river by the causeway. Someone sent a runner to fetch the keep guards as I was leaving." Both boys stopped in their tracks. "Why didn't you tell us earlier?" Finn asked. Immediately, he realized why. "Oh ... Sian wouldn't have let us leave." Briam's eyes widened in excitement. "We should go see what's happening. I bet Sergeant Cepero will be there." Briam loved watching the guards in action. During the festival last Seber, Rebecca, a healer and fortune teller, had read a flinger for Briam. Throwing flingers was a common method used to divine someone's future. Rebecca had told him that he was destined to join the town guard. Since then, he had taken every opportunity to watch them work. "What about food for leftwiches?" Kerith looked imploringly at the three older children. "We'll have plenty of time later to go to the market. We'll have to rush, but Sian will never know we made a side trip." Finn had taken two steps away before he finished his last sentence. Briam's response was similar. "Straight, we'll make you two leftwiches if you go with us." Kerith looked at Oriel last as if hoping for support, but she turned away and looked off into the distance, unwilling to oppose the boys. After the earlier argument, she wasn't about to question any idea that they both agreed on. Even more, some fascination drew her to the commotion at the causeway. What harm could come of it? "Kerith, I'll hold your hand," she finally said. The children started to walk but then began to jog, and Finn pulled ahead right away. Briam followed at a leisurely pace, turning back every once in a while to make sure the girls were close behind him. Soon they were on the causeway, where a crowd had already gathered. Finn raced ahead and squeezed in between a buxom matron and a stocky man. Briam held onto Kerith's other hand, and he and Oriel leaned over the stone railing on the side of the bridge. At first, she didn't see anything unusual. A short distance away, a barge was making its way down the river. Beneath the causeway, some workers stood on scaffolding above another barge anchored in place against the river current. They seemed to be performing repairs on one of the central stone arches of the bridge. Then she noticed about half-a-furlong upriver, on the banks, were various members of the town guard. Two of them were in a boat, fishing around in the reeds. As the children watched, something large and heavy was dragged out of the water and maneuvered onto a waiting cart. "Is that a body?" Oriel stared down, squinting. Briam stared for a while before answering. "It could be. If it is, he's dead." "Lift me up so that I can see." Kerith was jumping up and down in excitement, trying to see over the railing of the bridge, but Oriel and Briam responded abruptly. "Stay put." "Wait, Kerith." Briam pointed to one of the distant guardsmen who was limping slightly as he accompanied the cart towards the road. "Look, I think that's Sergeant Cepero." "I want to see," Kerith said. Oriel ignored her. The barge they had originally seen had crept close to the causeway by then. As they watched, it turned awkwardly to one side, then straightened, and then immediately spun again in the opposite direction. The people on its deck scurried about in confusion. A shout of warning went up from someone on the causeway. The barge was still moving forward, and as the spectators watched in open-mouthed shock, it crashed with an explosive bang into one of the middle pylons of the bridge. All around her, Oriel heard gasps and muffled yelps. The entire causeway rumbled under her feet as if a giant hand were shaking it. The stonework shrieked as it cracked right where the children stood. Oriel frantically turned to look for Kerith, but the girl had vanished. Around her the crowd stirred to panicked action. Some strained forward to look, others rushed back towards the ends of the bridge, many shoving and pushing as they ran. Some started speaking or calling out, and a few even began to scream in fright. Oriel's heart sank as she scanned the chaos, searching. Then she saw the younger girl, clinging to the rough stonework of the railing right next to the crack. As Oriel moved, she saw pieces of the upriver side of the bridge break off and fall. The gap in the stonework widened, extending in little tendrils towards the younger girl. Kerith saw it too, her eyes wide with terror. "Kerith! Give me your hand. Now!" Before Oriel could do anything more than yell, Briam sprang out of the crowd and pried Kerith's fingers from the railing. Scared, but realizing that he was helping, the little girl let go of the structure. Briam wasn't prepared for the sudden lack of resistance and stumbled backwards, falling heavily to the bridge surface with Kerith in his arms. As Briam lay panting on the roadway, Oriel leaned over him and pulled the smaller girl away. Kerith was crying but otherwise seemed uninjured. She reached over and clung to Oriel, and she felt tears streaming down her own cheeks as well. Another tremor shook the causeway. Oriel held Kerith tightly to her chest and found herself stumbling into a sitting position on the undamaged roadway. She stared in horror as the crack next to the girls began to widen. Then the road surface beyond it began to cant away from them, leaving Briam lying on his back on the sloping surface. "Briam!" Oriel screamed. He tried to scramble up, but before he could find his feet, he slid downwards as the broken part of the bridge tipped toward the river. Arms flailing, he tried to grab something, but the roadway was tilted at too much of an angle for him to find a grip. An older man and a guard reached out to grab Briam's hand, but the bridge was tipping too much, and he was sliding too fast. As Oriel watched, screaming, Briam reached the edge and pitched out of sight. Another crack sounded from the damaged roadway as more stonework split off and followed Briam down. The rumble picked up speed and roared ferociously. Nearly the entire sloped span broke off and fell. A resounding crash echoed from the river below. "Briam! Briam!" Oriel couldn't stop calling. She was still clinging to Kerith, who shook and cried piteously. Around the two girls, people were running. Most were moving away from the center of the causeway, but a few people stepped carefully towards the gap. Kerith let out a sudden wail, and only when Oriel heard the younger girl's voice did she realize that she herself was still screaming Briam's name. Someone grabbed her arm. "Hush! Come away from there, child. You can't do anything to help him." The older man who had tried to help Briam pulled Oriel away from the edge. She retreated with Kerith still clutched to her. Tears streaked the faces of both the girls; Kerith continued to sob while Oriel's weeping was now silent, but no less panicked. As she stumbled off the causeway, Finn came rushing from the crowd that had gathered where the roadway met the riverbank. "Oriel! Kerith! Come with me. We must get home before Sian finds out that we were here." He caught Kerith's arm and began marching her off. "No, Finn. No!" The small girl struggled in his determined grasp, but couldn't seem to break free. His brisk words had caught Oriel off guard, but they helped her tears stop. She hurried after him, calling, "Wait, Finn. We have to get Briam. Wait!" By this time Finn and Kerith were on the ground on the new city side of the river. He turned to face Oriel and his eyes darted from her to Kerith and beyond. "Where's Briam?" "I'm trying to tell you," Oriel cried, wiping the tears off her face. She felt as if her world was as tilted as the roadway had been when Briam fell. "We have to go back. He's down there. Look!" She turned and pointed to the rubble-filled gap. She began to move back toward the crack when Finn grabbed her hand. "No, someone has to go back to tell Sian. You have to take Kerith home. I'll go and look for Briam." "I can't just leave him!" Oriel tried to shake his hand off, but he would not let go. "He would never leave if I needed help." Finn said, "Oriel, it's not safe here. I'm the oldest and Sian put me in charge, so you have to do what I say. You have to go home." Enraged at being ordered, Oriel snapped, "Where were you when this happened? Sian told you to look after Kerith, and if you had been there, Briam wouldn't have fallen off." Finn blinked and looked at his feet for an instant. Then he met her gaze. "Look at Kerith, Oriel. She needs Sian. And I have to go look for Briam because I'm the one in charge. I wasn't there when the bridge fell, but I'm here now." Before Oriel could reply, a guard she did not recognize came up to them. "What are you kids doing here? You're Mistress Sian's children, aren't you?" When Kerith nodded, he continued, "She will be looking for you. You need to go home. Now." Finn said, "Yes, that's what I was just telling them. I have to go and look for Briam." The guard was shaking his head before Finn finished his statement. "No, no, you too. Aren, is it?" "No, I'm Finn." The guard said sternly, "Well then, Finn, you have to take care of the little one. I want your word that you will take the girls home." "You can't tell me what to do. I don't even know you." The guard gritted his teeth in an expression of frustration. "Cepero was right; you are a handful. Listen to me, all of you. I'm a sergeant; my name is Griebel, and I work with Sergeant Cepero. Now you know me too, and yes, I can tell you what to do. Give me your word, young Finn, that you will go home with the girls. Now!" Sergeant Cepero's name seemed to return some sense to Finn, and he nodded reluctantly. "Straight home!" As the sergeant watched them, Finn led the way, still holding Kerith's hand. He didn't go very fast, and Oriel guessed that he was fuming about being forced to give his word. He was probably just as worried about Briam as she was. Her mind was a whirl of thoughts, but her concern over Finn seemed oddly clear to her now. "Are you angry about having to go home, Finn?" she asked. "He made me give my word." Finn was brusque. "He's right. It's dangerous out on the bridge. Kerith almost fell, and Briam --" Oriel's voice was stopped by tears that just seemed to come out of nowhere. "Oh, stop crying, would you?" he snapped. Kerith, whose sobbing had abated to quiet hiccups as they started on their way home, glared at him. "Don't you yell at Oriel. It's all your fault because you ran off. Sian said you were in charge, and --" "Hush, Kerith," Oriel recovered her voice at the younger girl's spirited defense of her. Thinking of Briam had made the tears come back just for a moment, but she wouldn't weep now when she knew that Kerith needed her. Even though Sian had put Finn in charge, he and Kerith never got along, and Oriel knew she needed to make peace between the two of them. "No, it's his fault," Kerith insisted. "He should have stayed with us. I'll tell Sian on him, and --" "No, you won't." Finn shook his head vehemently. "It's not my fault. You should have kept up with me. And now I can't go and look for Briam because I have to take you home." Kerith stopped dead in the street, and Finn, still holding her hand, tugged. "Come on. I have to take you home and then go search for him. Come, you little git!" Kerith began to wail loudly. "I hate you! Briam fell down because you weren't there." "Finn! How could you say such a thing?" Oriel knelt in the street, putting both arms around Kerith. "Don't cry, Kerry, please. He didn't mean it." Two voices said as one: "Did too." In the midst of her worry and fear and tears, Oriel suddenly felt very tired. "Look, we have to get home quickly. Finn, you didn't see what we saw. Kerith's scared and so am I. You have to stop arguing with her. Kerith, hold my hand, and please, walk as fast as you can." Oriel rose and this time there was no conversation amongst the three children. The image of Briam sliding down the causeway into the river was stuck in her mind. Her stomach clenched. Would Sian make her feel better? No, Oriel decided; she would only feel better when she saw Briam. She remembered her mother leaving her in the warehouse. She had never seen her mother again. A soft sob escaped her. Briam had helped her then. He had come to see her at the warehouse every day, and she had agreed to live with Sian only because Briam lived there too. And now he had disappeared into the river. Would she ever see him again? "We're almost home." Finn's voice was flat. Oriel realized he looked pale. The older boy was transferring his weight back and forth between his two feet. "Oriel, you go in and tell Sian. I'm going back to look for Briam." "No, you're not," Oriel said. She could taste the fear in her mouth, and knew that it would be very bad if Finn went to the causeway. "The sergeant told you to go home, and you gave him your word. Sian will be able to find Briam." "I gave him my word that I would take you two straight home, which I have done," Finn pointed out. "I said nothing about going to search for Briam after taking you home, so there!" "Sian, Sian!" Kerith let go of Oriel's hand and ran through into the yard where Sian was hanging sheets on a clothesline. The little girl hugged Sian's legs and the words spilled from her. "Finn left us all and Briam fell into the river, and the guard made Finn promise to come home, and it's all Finn's fault, and now he's yelling at Oriel. Make him stop! Briam's gone, and I'm so scared! I hate Finn!" Oriel and Finn stopped arguing in shock as they listened to the torrent of words. Sian looked at the two of them, and her face tightened as she looked at Oriel. "Hush, Kerith. What happened, you two?" Finn was silent, and Oriel glanced at him before she turned back to Sian. "A barge hit the causeway and broke it in two." Sian's eyes widened and her voice was incredulous. "What? That can't be right." "She's right. I saw it." Kerith nodded. Sian didn't answer at once but bent to loosen Kerith's grip on her knees. "Start from the beginning, please. Where's Briam?" At her mention of his name, Oriel groaned and began to cry again, and Sian looked up at once, her eyes crinkled as she frowned. "By Celine! What happened? Tell me quickly." Finn remained silent, so it fell to Oriel to explain what had happened. He didn't speak until she finished. "Sian, we have to go look for him," he said. "You are not going anywhere," Sian said sternly. "You have behaved completely irresponsibly, and I have had quite enough. You're fourteen years old and should know better -- " She interrupted herself. "Never mind that. I'll deal with you after we get Briam back. And hear me, Finn, you are going to be doing chores with no time off for sennights, months even. This time, I'm putting Oriel in charge, and if I hear that you didn't do what she asks you, then you will understand what punishment really means. Am I clear?" Finn nodded, face glum. "Oriel, take care of Kerith. Fix leftwiches for lunch. Finn, finish hanging these sheets, then go inside the house. I expect to find the whole house swept and mopped when I return with Briam." Sian decided to go to the guardhouse first. She wanted to see if Lieutenant Darklen or Sergeant Cepero were there. The children's story of the causeway falling into the river was unbelievable. Why were the children even at the causeway? Where was Briam? Oriel was responsible beyond her years. She was familiar with death and loss, so seeing her so upset made Sian worry. By this time Sian had reached the guardhouse, which seemed deserted. There were two pages sitting in the lobby, but that was it. "Where are all the guards?" she asked one. The small boy replied, "Oh, a runner came, missus. Seems the causeway broke. Hey, Enid, what did you see?" He addressed the other page, a little girl. The girl, about eight years old, spoke in a high-pitched voice. "Oh my, it was terrible. It broke in half, and fell into the river. All the people fell in the river too. I was there with Sergeant Cepero, and he sent me over to fetch everyone else. They're saying that lots of people are dead." Sian gulped. "Thanks, children." She left, heading toward the causeway. It sounded incredible, but it was true. Her stomach clenched at the thought, and her breath stuck in her throat. No, she wouldn't think the worst based only on the story of a child. Without conscious thought, she increased her pace. Within a couple of menes, she had arrived at the causeway. The sight that met her eyes was as unreal as any dream or nightmare she'd ever had. The huge stone bridge that had been a part of the cityscape for all her life was no longer intact. Near the center of the river, a large bite of stone was missing from the upriver side of the bridge, leaving only a narrow span connecting the two sides of the city. Even this slender width appeared fragile and Sian could not see anyone venturing across it. Below the causeway, she could see rubble sticking out of the water. Rescuers scurried back and forth between the broken stonework and a large barge. The chaos was almost worse than the destruction of the causeway, some people milling around, gawking and gossiping, others with anxious expressions on their faces trying to get to the scene of the disaster. On the keep side, she could make out groups of people on the riverbanks. On her side, guards were pulling people and things from the river. A few aid stations had been set up, with the town guard carrying victims from the banks to the healers. Someone pushed her aside from behind. "Make way for a healer." A stout guardswoman held Sian aside as a middle-aged matron hurried toward the river, a satchel hanging from her arm. She glanced back as she passed, catching Sian's eye. The healer looked as shocked as the rest of the crowd. Her unkempt hair and the deep bags below her eyes seemed to suggest that she'd just woken up and it only helped to further emphasize the look of fear on her face. Even as the woman hurried on, Sian wondered if a similar look was etched on her own features. The healer was soon lost from sight amid the tumult of rescuers closest to the causeway. The woman who held her arm spoke gently, but firmly. "Miss, you need to go home. You can't stay here. All of you in this crowd are hindering the rescuers." Her tunic showed her to be a member of the town guard. "We've got enough help; now what we need is space." "I can't leave!" Sian almost wailed, her voice breaking as she struggled to speak calmly. "One of my children is here somewhere. A young boy." "We'll look for him," the woman said. "But you have to go home." Sian swallowed her fear and tried to speak with a level voice. "Fine, I will." She made as if to leave, projecting calm acceptance, while inside, her gut clenched. As soon as the guard turned away to break up another group of gawkers, Sian ducked around the corner of a small building and made her way back towards the first aid station upriver of the causeway. She paused just outside the grassy strip and surveyed the scene. There were two healers here: a young man and an older, graying one. Both were working on the same man, the younger one splinting the patient's leg, and the other occupied with a badly wounded arm. Two guards carried a woman into the area. She was unconscious, and her face was covered with blood. The younger healer finished tying the splint in place and left the patient to the older one's ministrations. He went to the woman and began to clean her face. A guard came in carrying a bucket of water. Three patients who had already been tended to sat, blank-eyed, on the other side of the two healers, and Sian's quick glance confirmed that Briam was not among them: they were all adults. She clenched her jaw, trying to remain calm. She had to keep looking. She moved to the next aid station that was set on the riverbanks on the downriver side of the causeway. The same picture repeated itself, except there were half a dozen healers and physicians here, and more patients, a few children among them. Sian hurried to a few boys sitting together. As she focused her gaze on one face after another, her heartbeat faded and relief filled her. She didn't recognize any of them. "Get me a stick to splint this," a healer snapped at Sian. She didn't hesitate, and hurried to do as she was bid. When she returned with a stick, she was instructed to hold it. The healer began to splint the arm of a young man, saying, "Hold it just so. Yes, thank you." Sian saw the healer glance at her before continuing, "Are you a guard?" "No. I'm here looking for my boy. My girls say that he fell from the causeway into the river. I've searched in the other aid station and I can't find him." "Hmm. He could have been rescued on the keep side of the river, you know." The healer stopped talking, focusing on the last step of the splint. As Sian watched, the healer tied the last knot and then asked softly, "Have you checked the bodies?" "Bodies?" Sian whispered. "Yes. See there," she nodded further south a few paces away where a few guards were placing bodies pulled from the river. "Go check before you continue searching. Be brave, mistress, and may Saren spare you his blessings!" The healer turned away to attend to her next patient, and Sian walked away, hearing the tolling that marked the seventh bell of day. She could not help but think of the healer's words. Saren was the god of suffering, and his blessings were considered to be unlucky. She moved to the next section on the riverbank, an area that was a makeshift morgue. A pair of guards dumped a body of a young woman, her limbs flopping loosely as she struck the ground. The weary pair went back into the river, where one of their compatriots was wading along the bank. Sian stepped up to the latest corpse in the row, and quickly adjusted her limbs, trying not to look at the young woman's features. She began to step around the bodies in her search, the thundering of her heart threatening to overpower her. Occasionally, she would stop to roll over a body or adjust the limbs on another. Her tears would not stop, and she constantly had to wipe her eyes as she looked. She estimated there were nearly two dozen bodies in the row. The smell of the river, always a slightly acrid odor of water and fish and feces, was mixed with the scent of blood here. The horrific injuries to some of the dead made her want to gag, but the dread of finding Briam in that press of corpses was enough to make her ignore everything and continue her search. The wounds had rendered some of the bodies grotesque, and the next three, a man whose skull had been cleft open, another man whose legs were crushed, and a woman whose corpse was twisted half-way around at the waist, were enough to overpower Sian's resolution; she had to turn away to throw up. Wiping her mouth, she returned to the line of bodies and she saw a small boy's corpse, nearly hidden under a large man. Her heartbeat was loud enough to overpower the pounding in her head. Tears filled her eyes too fast for her to wipe off, and a giant sob seemed stuck in her throat, neither disappearing nor coming out. She reached out a hand that trembled violently. "Hey, what are you doing?" One of the guards had come back, this time with no bodies. She swallowed, trying to push back the moment when she would know for sure whether or not she would find Briam's body here. "Looking for my boy," she said. The guard's face softened. "Is he here?" "I don't know." She looked back at the pile, and the guard moved to it. Sian watched as he gently moved aside the adult corpse. She recognized the body of the boy underneath! But it was not Briam. It was Nolan, a young boy who lived down the street from her house. She sobbed aloud. "I'm sorry, mistress." The guard paused for a moment. "I'm sorry for your loss." Sian shook her head, trying to form the words. "No, this isn't my boy, but I do recognize him. He lives on Murson Street. His mother is in the guard. Her name is Treya Ludon." The guard frowned. "Treya Ludon?" Sian glanced at him and realized that he wore the uniform of the Dargon town guard. "She's in the ducal guard, not the town guard." "Oh." There was a long pause and the guard finally broke the silence between the two of them. "About your son -- he may be on the other side of the river." He pointed across to where the keep seemed to squat on the hill over where the guards and healers were working. When she looked, he put a hand on her shoulder and lowered his voice, "I heard that many of those alive had been pulled to this side. There's a lot more dead on the keep side. And we're not sure if we managed to get everyone out of the water." Sian drew in a deep breath. She couldn't believe Briam was dead. "I'm sorry, mistress." She nodded. "Do you know where Lieutenant Darklen or Sergeant Cepero are?" The guard looked back at her, surprise in his eyes. "Yes, mistress. They're both on the keep side. We have Sergeant Caisy on this side and Sergeant Cepero just went over, not five menes past, to direct rescue operations over there. The lieutenant is with him, I think." "Can you send a runner and tell them that Sian said Briam is missing?" Sian barely waited for an acknowledgement before she moved away. She didn't know whether to go over to the other side or not. How would that help? She didn't think she could bear to see Briam's body. The images of the broken corpses she had seen earlier ghosted past her mind's eye and she shuddered. Glancing at the causeway, she realized that even if she wanted to cross, she couldn't because the guards had blocked the way across. Her mind in a strange fog, she turned her feet and let them take her home. As she plodded along, tried to face the possibility that Briam was dead. The thought reverberated in her head, growing louder and louder until she thought she could not bear it. The town bell tolled. It was the ninth day bell, and the sun was dipping towards the horizon, although the long summer evening had enough light left that it would be a while before it was dark. She thought of Briam, the boy with the quick temper and broad smile that she had taken into her home and her heart. She couldn't find him, but she refused to believe he was dead until she saw his body. Soon she would be home where the other children awaited her. How would she tell them? What would she tell them? That morning they had been playing together; now their lives had been changed forever. Couldn't they stay innocent a little longer? They'd already been orphaned. Why did they have to continue to suffer? "Sian, are you all right?" She realized that Tom Madden was speaking to her and he held her by her upper arms. Sian blinked. She was on Murson Street already and she hadn't even noticed it. "What?" "You said something. What is it? You look terrible. What's wrong, Sian?" Tom's voice was full of concern. Sian began to weep. She told him everything the children had told her. She ended with, "Tom, Briam is missing. I think he may be dead." "What? Are you sure they're not just playing a game?" Tom slid his arms around her, and Sian leaned into his embrace, letting her tears soak his tunic. He continued, "I don't believe it. We need to search. Have you --?" "Where do you think I've been?" Sian wailed, lifting her head to look at him. "Sian, where's his body?" Tom asked, staring into her eyes. "I don't know. I couldn't find it." "Well then, he may still be alive. Tell me where you've searched." "Everywhere." "Both sides of the river?" "No. They wouldn't let me cross to the keep side." Tom said, "Straight, then I'll go. You need to go and get some rest. The children are by themselves, Sian, and it's getting late. They need you right now. I'll find a way across the river." Sian grabbed his sleeve to stop him, and said, "I asked one of the guards to send a runner over to the other side. He told me Roman is over there." "Roman?" "Sergeant Cepero. He's on the keep side. Check with him if he's seen Briam, and don't forget to --" Sian gulped. "To check the dead." "Don't think that way," Tom said. "I will find Briam. If I know anything of him, he'll be helping the good sergeant. Go inside, and be with the children, Sian." He gave her a push toward her cottage, and Sian trudged inside, hoping that Briam was alive, but beginning to doubt. ========================================================================