Timegods' World Read Online Free PDF Page A

clear. Dr. Yellertond loved to assign holiday duties.
    “First power failure I’ve been in …”
    “Do you suppose it was the satellite relay?”
    “Probably just an interrupter here.”
    I didn’t say anything. There had already been too many coincidences, and the power loss had something to do with the Mithrada situation. For some reason, I thought about my mother. She had not been planning to go to Inequital the night before. Yet she had been up and dressed, and very preoccupied.
    She had friends in the capital—that was why she spent so much time there, she said, but that would not have explained her worried expression. She never looked worried. And the ice storm—that was unusual.
    “What do you think, Sammis?”
    “Yes, what’s the runt think?”
    What I thought about was giving Reylin a broken leg. My mother had instructed me in Delkaiba, just enough to make me cautious about trying to use it. But Reylin was always asking for a lesson of sorts.
    “I think that the lights are going to stay out—for a long time.” The words popped out before I could draw them back.
    “Now the runt’s a prophet …”
    Already the lab was getting chilly, or it seemed that way to me, and the sulfur smell was more pungent than usual. The bruise I had gotten in falling on the icy front walk in my nightmare, or whatever, hurt if I sat on the lab stool wrong.
    “Silence!” Dr. Yellertond was standing in the laboratory doorway.
    The murmurs and whispers vanished into the gloom of the big classroom.
    “The power outage is not local, but stems from a failure in the satellite relay systems. You are all dismissed. Anyone who does not live within walking distance of the Academy may wait in the library or the main anteroom of the administration building.”
    The tall, thin professor watched as we gathered books and notes together, and as we trooped out into the corridor, boots scuffling on the polished stone floors.
    Like everything else in Westron the Academy was constructed mostly of stone, with slate roofing on heavy timbers. Interior walls were either paneled or plastered and replastered.
    That was because most of the petroleum and iron had been exhausted by the First Civilization, or so Dr. Editris had said. He claimed the failure of the few Eastron oil reserves had led to the fall of the Eastron Republic … but that was history. I wondered if my father would be home when I got there, or if I would have to avoid Shaera by myself. Certainly, if the power link had failed for the Academy, there would be no power for the small Imperial complex at Bremarlyn, or for the Revenue Court.
    “ … could be serious …”
    “ … first time we’ve been dismissed in mid-day …”
    Dr. Yellertond kept swinging around to find someone to glare at, but every time he started to turn the whispers disappeared. Allyson once had told me that the whispers at the girls’ academy—it was called Tyrnelle House—were far worse.
    Were they sending the girls home from Tyrnelle? If so, I could go over to the Davniadses. That would be better than staying at home with Shaera, who, for all her well-intentioned energy, would try to find something for me to do that I was really supposed to do. Allyson was interesting to talk to, even if she did look down on me.
    “Silence!” The word had always been Dr. Yellertond’s favorite, and he was not opposed to overusing it.
    By then, we had all straggled into the central robing hall, where our lockers lined the walls. More than half the upper classes were already there, and Dr. Yellertond winced as the whispers washed over and around him. The man should have been a mystic or a retreat academic, not a teacher of young adults.
    Finally, he shrugged, as if to wash his hands of us, and made a vague gesture, muttering something I could not hear.
    “Are we officially dismissed?” I asked Loiren, who was grabbing a heavy winter cloak from his locker, right next to mine.
    “That’s what the assistant magister