Chapter 10

Tiqua was not happy to learn that new mages were on the island.

While being an island nation, the population in the Tear Islands was sparse by Earth standards. Considering how big some of the other islands were, this meant that only a few people moved to this island each year. This suited Tiqua just fine as she had enough problems.

While they did trade with ships from the other islands, they didn’t have a lot to trade other than the minerals her people dug from the Earth. Fortunately, they had found deep copper deposits in the mountains on her side of the island and tin ore in the streams.

They had even set up smelting operations and several small industries that made copper and bronze goods like pipes, pipe and boat fittings, copper wire, lamp holders, tools and many other objects. Bronze sheeting for ship hulls was a big selling item.

It kept ships coming into the port, and they had even set up shipyards to apply the sheeting and other repairs. They also had logging and milling operations to supply timbers for the ships. These industries kept her people in jobs and money coming in for her little luxuries.

Tiqua’s biggest problem was the lack of Quaz crystals on this island. She had spent many years searching for them as she was sure they were here. Why else had the ship landed them here?

The ship had informed them it had a fuel leak, and it required the crystals to help fix it. Other than telling them that the crystals were in the mountains, it had told them to leave the ship due to the contamination and then shut down.

Tiqua suspected the crystals were on Iqama’s half of the island, but her spies said that he hadn’t found them either. As it was, it took her fifty years to finally get Iqama to agree to let her move the healthy people to a new town.

It then took her many years to establish the town and encourage trade with the other islands. At first, the expense of the crystals limited how many Tiqua could buy. However, in the last fifty years, it has gotten desperate. She now found the crystals were almost impossible to buy in any great quantity.

There was talk during that time that many of the crystal caverns on the other islands had run out of crystals. Zeta Island used to be her major supplier but not anymore.

She worried that this island’s crystal cavern may also have collapsed like many others, when they had the massive quakes a hundred years before. The one good thing was that the earthquakes had opened up the seams of copper she found.

They had given her a way to isolate her town from that infested village her deranged ex-husband ran. He was supposed to stop those people from moving to infect the healthy.

In desperation, she had managed to scrounge, beg and steal enough crystals to get her smelter running and erect the shield to keep the sick away from her and her people. Now she desperately needed more. The old crystals she had stolen from Iqama were failing.

She wanted to expand her empire. While her population was considered small, she still had nearly three thousand people to care for. However, that was impossible without the crystals, and even worse, the shield had started fluctuating in the last five years.

Then to add to her woes, three months ago, a ship turned up with sick sailors on it, and they were able to get through the shield and off the ship. The damn disease they carried was blasting through her population.

They’d already had three pregnant women die, and five more had delivered deformed children. Tiqua shuddered at the thought of more deformed kids. Her disgusting grandson would just have to take them in.

A few of her people had one-gem magical items, and they had no answers to the disease as none of them were skilled healers. They had already reported that six young children had died from high fevers and twice as many older adults.

While they often had a few deaths due to winter chills, it had been far worse this year. Those who had gotten over the disease in the first couple of months had become sick with the chills. Now it seems as if the disease had flared up again.

Tiqua was at her wit’s end.

“So, are we going to go visit the other town?” David asked.

They were all sitting in the ship’s dining area, having just finished lunch. They had parked the ship in a small hidden valley not far from the hidden entrance to the cave system. Tommy, who now preferred to be called Tammy, had elected to be mum, and she was pouring out the tea.

Jax shrugged. “Yeah, I think we had better. I’m not sure what sort of reception we will get. Traz said they hadn’t had a ship in port for months, but somehow, they had chickenpox doing the rounds of the town. He thinks their latest refugees from Tiqua’s town brought it with them.”

“Why is it such a problem? I mean, most kids get it, and other than getting a few pox scars, they are fine after a couple of weeks,” Eddie commented as he scrounged one of the biscuits off the plate in the middle of the table.