"It started at the third hour of the afternoon, Your Majesty," the man gasped, his voice cracking as Soren stepped into the light.
"The sky… there was a black line across the clouds, like a seam in an old coat. Then the stone below the cabbage patches began to roar. It wasn't an earthquake, sire. The rock itself came upward through the wheat, grinding like a millstone. Three houses were torn clear off their foundations at the lane-end. Six dead in the ruins, and fourteen more we had to drag out by their hair."
Aldric was already there, sitting at the end of the table with a clean sheet of paper and his inkwell open, his wool cloak pinned tight at his throat because he had come straight from his bed without his stockings.
Ryse spat into the cold ashes of the hearth.
