Heraklion: Outcast by Paul Edmund Norman

Shortly after sunup the peace was shattered by a violent trembling underfoot. Tiberis leapt to his feet and raced through the pillared hallways to the basement, where Beneric was slumped across a marble-topped table. He felt the boy's neck, and was relieved to find a pulse. Again the floor and the walls shook, and a small amount of plaster fell from the ceiling.

'Beneric!' Tiberis shouted, trying to rouse his youngest son. 'Come on, it's not safe here!' The room was littered with mixing bowls, grinding stones, glass jars filled with mysterious liquids which gave off steam even though they were cold. Everywhere there was powder. Reddish-brown in colour, the floor was ankle-deep in it, and there was a fine layer of it over every work surface.

'Beneric!' Tiberis shouted again, and this time the boy roused sufficiently to open his eyes. At seventeen summers, he was three years younger than his brother, Cormac.

'What is it?'

'You have gone too far this time!' Tiberis said, frowning.

'What?'

'Your experiments. you've rocked the entire building!'

'That wasn't me!' Beneric wailed. Tiberis dragged him to his feet and grasped him firmly by the ears. The boy winced.

'You're hurting me!'

'You can't carry on like this, Beneric! You won't be satisfied until the building collapses about our ears!'

'It wasn't him, father, it was an earthquake.' Tiberis turned to see his eldest son, Cormac, framed in the doorway. Even though the door frame was standard height, the young man could barely squeeze his frame through it. In contrast, Beneric was thin and fragile-looking, though he was deceptively strong. Tiberis released Beneric.

'Earthquake?'

'Yes, it's the third in as many moons. My guess is that something is going on beneath the ocean floor.'

Tiberis was immediately struck by the boy's casualness, the way he walked, the way he talked, he had about him an air of laziness, though that was not the case. Cormac was hard-working and popular about the city, and gave his parents much to be proud of in him. Yet he appeared totally unconcerned at the prospect of the earthquake destroying their home.

'It is only a building,' he had once remarked. 'We could build another as soon as the trouble is past.'

'I thought it was Beneric,' Tiberis explained.

'You worry about him unnecessarily,' Cormac said, laughing. 'He has been mixing his powders and potions together for four years now, and nothing has ever come of it.'

Beneric glared at his brother.

'One day.....'

'Is there any structural damage?' Tiberis asked anxiously. 'Your mother, your sisters.....'

'All is well, you have nothing to worry about. Whoever put up these buildings built them to last a while.'

But there were cracks beginning to manifest themselves in the enormous pillars that supported the ceiling, and some of the dust on the floor was plaster.

'The outhouses.....'

'They are fine, too, father. Really, you worry too much. These will all be here when we're all gone.'

'Cormac, your confidence does you great credit, but I do not believe they will survive another summer of earthquakes,' Tiberis said.

'What made you think it was Beneric, anyway?' Cormac asked.

'Yes, why do you always blame me?' Beneric wailed.

'I heard you down here early this morning, before the sun was up, before even the slaves were up!' Tiberis reprimanded him. 'You're up to no good!'

'Yes, what are you trying to make, Beneric?'

'Something to help celebrate something,' Beneric said.

'What?'

'I don't want to say. Not just yet.'

Tiberis glared at his younger son, and pushing past the elder, ran lightly up the steps.

'I don't trust you!' he said, and was gone, leaving the two to their own devices.

'Well?' Cormac asked, tracing a line in the red dust on the floor with his sandalled foot.

'Well what?'

'You can tell me. What are you doing?'

'It's none of your business!'

'Of course it is! You expect me to cover for you, though so far I've had nothing to cover for!'

'I am making a substance which, when a flame is applied to it, will decorate the night sky, painting it with flowers and such like,' Beneric announced proudly. Secretly, though he would not care to admit it, he desired his brother's friendship and support. Cormac refrained from laughing. It was one thing to tease your younger brother in the presence of such an august person as their father, but now, alone with Beneric, he wanted more than anything to see him make something of himself.

'For what purpose?'

'I said, for a celebration.'

'What celebration?'

'Mother and father. In a few days' time they will be able to affirm their companionship. I have dreamed of these things, Cormac! I know they exist, if I could only mix the right quantities of the right substances.....'

Again Beneric glared at his brother. They were saved the embarrassment of further argument as their father reappeared at the top of the stone steps.

'You had better come and help. Trovistus' barn has collapsed. There are cattle and men inside. He needs our help.'

The two brothers charged up the steps and the three of them ran to their neighbour's plot of land, less than a hundred yards from their own comparatively palatial plot. Tiberis was kjal of Walfenland, the continental island off the west coast of Barbessel. They lived smack in the centre of the island, at the southernmost edge of the great flood plain. To their east were the mountains that culminated in the sheer one thousand feet-high cliffs that dropped to the oceanic channel.

'Trovistus,' Tiberis said, out of breath, and holding onto his knees to alleviate the exertion of running from his basement, 'how many are trapped?'