The shaking lasted less than a minute, but Jayla stayed where she was in case it started up again. Cody had tilted his head as if he was listening to the heartbeat of the world itself.
“Didn’t seem as bad as the one this morning,” he said.
“Do you think it’s over?” Jayla asked.
“Hard to say,” Cody replied. “Usually they come in bunches, but each new one is a little weaker than the last one.”
Jayla came cautiously to her knees. “Usually?” she repeated.
Cody nodded. “They’ve been hitting more often. And I’ve heard that Darrish Mountain has been spitting out ash for the past few months.”
Pietro had released Aussen and settled her next to him on the ground. “That’s grim news,” he observed.
Jayla looked at him. “Why?”
She thought he chose his answer with care. “It’s always unnerving when the continent seems to be tearing itself apart.”
Cody rearranged himself into a cross-legged sitting position. “There have been a lot of little tremors lately,” he said. “But it’s been a long time since we had really dangerous quakes in the city.”
Pietro nodded. “Ten years,” he said.
Cody grinned. “And nothing bad happened.”
This time it was even longer before Pietro answered. “Exactly. Nothing bad.”
“You think it’s worse now?” Jayla asked. “Why?”
“I think—” He paused to refill Aussen’s cup of water. “Our whole continent is a precarious construct. Held together by a power none of us understand. I wonder sometimes how long its contours will hold.”
The ground felt solid enough now that Jayla felt safe dropping down and copying Cody’s cross-legged pose. “But Cordelan put the continent together,” she said. “That’s what they taught us when I was growing up.”
Pietro shrugged. “Oh yes, that’s the theology,” he said. “The goddesses Dar and Zessaya spent centuries feuding with each other across seas and inlets, but their little fiefdoms were separated by enough open ocean that it didn’t really matter. Everyone in Chibain and Marata worshipped Dar, and everyone from the outer islands was devoted to Zessaya. Then Cordelan arrived and raised his hands and declared that he would bind many disparate lands together. And he sewed the mountains to the flatlands, and the islands to the coastlines, and he set Corcannon in the curve of this new continent. And the rivers from Chibain flowed onto the plains of Marata and created lush farmland that burst with new crops. And the minerals from the islands suddenly became available throughout the land. And everyone thrived in this world reshaped by Cordelan’s hands.” He lifted his eyebrows at her and there was a note of polite disbelief in his voice as he said, “And is that what you believe?”
Jayla shrugged. “In Oraki, we put more stock in small household gods who can make the way smooth or offer a night’s protection. It’s not that we don’t honor Cordelan, it’s just that he doesn’t seem very present in daily life.”
Pietro nodded and glanced over at Cody with his eyebrows still raised. “Do I believe?” Cody asked. He spread his hands. “I don’t think about it much, but I always assumed it was all true. Isn’t it?”
Pietro made soft scoffing noise. “Our learned scientists have studied the composition of the various provinces of the continent, and they have concluded that, indeed, at some point in the distant past they were separate bodies of land. They say that something knitted them together nearly a thousand years ago to create the world as we know it now. Perhaps it was Cordelan. Perhaps it was a natural drift of land masses that caused these bodies to collide. Perhaps Cordelan was an opportunistic schemer who took credit for something he had no hand in at all.”
Cody’s eyes grew wide. “That’s blasphemy! Isn’t it?”
Pietro grinned. “It’s a topic that is debated with great energy at all our institutions of learning. Since you cannot prove deity, I suppose it will continue to be debated for decades to come. But the point is not really how the continent was created. The point is that it is an assemblage of somewhat incompatible fragments that seem, from time to time, bent on repudiation.” When the other two stared at him blankly, Pietro sighed. “We don’t know what power holds the separate parts of the continent together, but what if that power is failing? And what if the quakes are warning us that the land is about to split apart?”
Cody dropped his elbows to the ground and leaned back, supremely unconcerned. “There have always been quakes, and everything has held together so far.”
“So far,” Pietro echoed.
Jayla’s mind always focused on practical matters. “Well, if you don’t know how the power is supplied, what can you do to fix it even if it is going bad?” she asked.
Pietro gave her a long, serious look and said, “That is exactly the question.”
Aussen, who had sat there silently this whole time, set her plate on the ground and stood up. “Are you going back to your friends?” Pietro asked. “You can stay here if you like.”
Jayla came to her feet, ready to escort Aussen through the camp. “I’ll help her find them. If she—”
Another rumble shook the ground and she dropped hurriedly back to her knees. But Cody had been right: This episode seemed less intense than the last two, almost half-hearted. As if the land was a snarling dog that had snapped at an unwelcome stranger, then continued to growl for the next few minutes just to show it wasn’t tame. “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” she said cautiously.
Halfway across the camp, there was a sizzle and an explosion, followed by a hysterical scream. Jayla leapt up, peering in that direction, hands on her weapons belt. A few feet away, another ominous hiss and the cracking sound of something erupting into flames. Then another, farther away. Another. All over the camp, people were shouting, pointing, and crying out in fear.
Pietro and Cody were on their feet. “What’s happening?” Cody demanded.
“I don’t know,” Jayla answered. “I think—”
Their own small fire gurgled and spit and suddenly bloomed outward in a terrifying flare. Pietro snatched Aussen and stumbled backward as Cody and Jayla scrambled away. Jayla caught a whiff of a marshy, rotting odor.
“The fires! Put out the fires!” someone shouted from ten or twenty yards away. “There’s gas rising up from underground! Put out the fires!”
The cry was taken up across the camp, and suddenly there was a frenzy all around them as travelers hurried to douse their flames. Cody cursed and leapt forward, kicking apart the sticks of their own campfire, then stubbing out the flames with the heavy end of an unlit branch. Jayla joined him, rolling the burning logs until they extinguished themselves in the dirt, stomping on the embers that glowed treacherously in the grass.
After a few moments, she heard Cody draw a long breath and she lifted her eyes to gaze around. The whole plateau was completely dark, nothing but shadows filled with shadows. A low rumble of conversation spilled out in all directions, filled half with excitement and half with discontent. Can you believe that? The air itself just caught on fire! What else is going to go wrong for us?
“Well, that was something I wasn’t expecting,” Cody said, and even his cheerful voice seemed strained.