“The moons are both waxing to a double full,” ’Gren pointed out.
“Thieves’ season, isn’t that what they call it in Col?” I looked speculatively at him. “They’ll be setting a watch, if they’ve got a pennyweight of sense.”
“A guard can always be distracted,” said ’Gren with undeniable truth. “Zenela would be out of her blankets fast enough if a spider tried a fumble in her shift. Sorgrad can take care of her, that should cheer him up.”
“What’s the burr under his saddle, anyway?” I asked softly.
“Ask him yourself. I can’t say.” ’Gren shrugged. “He’ll get over it. Now, are we going to take them before they take us?”
“It would be the surest way to find out if they were honest men,” I allowed. I’d promised Ryshad to avoid thieving, unless out of direst necessity, but relieving dishonest men of ill-gotten gains could hardly be called stealing, could it? And it would certainly improve Sorgrad’s mood, even more so since Usara could be counted on to disapprove.
“A few trinkets to trade couldn’t hurt,” murmured ’Gren. “All Forest Folk have an eye for nice jewelry. They could be carrying just what we need to trade for a sing of your songs.”
I looked at him. “Let’s see if anyone’s wakeful enough to make difficulties come midnight. If so, we leave it.”
’Gren smiled, teeth white in the deepening gloom. “It’ll be easy as feeding cherries to a donkey.”
A chord from Frue’s lute ended our conversation. The minstrel had left the intermittent warmth of our sulky fire and his arrival prompted a gathering around the largest fire. Old favorites were sung with gusto and so was Frue’s new song, much to my satisfaction. Zenela sang, her rich voice spiraling up to the bright stars and sending every nightingale within earshot off to its roost in a huff.
The bridgekeeper started a move to settle by putting up his shutters. The wagoneers disappeared beneath the shelter of their carts, horses secure behind an improvised quickthorn stockade. The packmen talked for a while, wrapped in their cloaks, low-voiced over the embers, but by the time Halcarion’s Crown showed me midnight the camp was silent and still. The rushing chuckle of the river was the only sound beyond the occasional stir of a horse or some rustle in the underbrush.
I watched the arc of stars move slowly across the sky, the colorless light fading as the moons both followed their courses down behind the trees. Rolling over, I found myself face to face with ’Gren, his eyes lively with mischief. “Have they set themselves a watch?”
“Not last time I went for a piss,” he replied, barely audible. “They’re trusting to the fellow by the carts.”
“And he’s asleep?”
“Snoring like a cottager’s pig,” confirmed ’Gren. He unwrapped his blanket from ready-booted legs.
“Where’s Sorgrad?”
“Next to Zenela,” ’Gren smirked. “Ready to invite himself into her blankets if we need a distraction.”
“You’d better find something worthwhile,” I warned. “She’ll black his eye for him.”
“He said she shouldn’t show off the goods if she’s not selling,” ’Gren whispered.
A lesson better learned at Sorgrad’s hands than others’ I could think of. “Which way are you going around?”
“Yonder.” ’Gren passed his hand low over the ground between us. “You see any of them stirring, sit up and cough.”
I rolled over again and pillowed my head on my arm. The four we suspected were shapeless huddles of blankets in the darkness. Their ponies were picketed and dozing to one side, harness and the baggage sought stacked between the sleeping men. That wouldn’t deter ’Gren. Nothing would, not when a fancy took him.
Over by the carts, the merchants’ supposed guard rested motionless against a cartwheel, chin on his chest, still snoring. Faint rustles suggested no more than branches swaying on the night breeze or some foraging woodland animal.
Movement beside me had me nearly bite my lip through. Sorgrad sat bolt upright, face ashen in the moonlight. Usara opened perplexed eyes and sudden fear ran cold fingers down my backbone.
“The river—” Usara’s words were drowned by a roar shattering the stillness of the night. A brutal gust of bitter air surged through the camp, ominous with a stink of weed and water. Birds erupted from the trees, shrieking in alarm, and unseen shapes came crashing through the spring growth. Rabbits and weasels fled something more terrifying than any bigger beast. A spotted deer ignored the fires and unfamiliar scents of our campground and raced through, head back, tail high in alarm. As the hind vanished, the ground vibrated beneath us, as if something huge and untamed drummed frantically high on the hillside.
“Everyone, away from the river,” bellowed Usara but he took a pace toward the ruins of the bridge. Shouts and questions roused half the camp, scrambling free of their blankets, but others were scarcely registering the commotion as they raised sleepy heads. In a rumbling rush of sound and fury, a torrent crashed down on us, foaming up out of the riverbed. Water came surging through the trees, fallen timber slamming into beasts and people, tossing them helpless in the grip of the flood.
“Get behind me!” Usara yelled, turning to face the riot of water and debris racing toward us. I grabbed frantically for my bag with the precious book inside it. Sorgrad seized my arm with iron fingers, his other hand knotted in the donkey’s bridle. The animal’s rolling eyes were white-rimmed in terror so I flung a blanket over its head and held it close. I gritted my teeth and waited for the impact—but a shimmering wall of emerald light defied the flood.
It rose from the ground, seeming no more substantial than a curtain of shot silk the width of Usara’s outspread arms. It was strong enough to send the greedy torrent skittering sideways. Spray stung my face, needles of icy fire, but the killing rage of the water could not touch us. It could only fall away on either side, boiling with fury as we escaped its ravenous clutches, dirty froth blown on the wind like the spittle from a mad dog’s mouth.
Usara stood, feet braced and hands wide, effort twisting his face as a new ripple of amber fire ran from his fingers to the ground. The magic raced toward the river, a spreading tracery, shining through the muddy water racing ever higher crested with choking foam. Sorcery clawed at the banks on both sides, earth and grass cracking like ice trodden under a boot heel, great chunks carried away on the water. As the land fell away, the torrent was sucked inexorably back into the riverbed it had abandoned, leaving us gasping with the shock of such unexpected devastation.
For half a breath, maybe less, there was utter silence, then the frantic neighing of a horse broke the thrall and shouts came from all directions.
“Sorgren!” bellowed Sorgrad.
I couldn’t have heard an answer if one came. I was wrestling with the cursed donkey, shins and toes smarting with its kicks and stamping. I shook its halter furiously. “These are new boots, curse you!”
Soaking wet and hands trembling, Frue appeared from somewhere and helped me tie the recalcitrant beast to a sodden tree trunk.
“Zenela?” I demanded.
“I had her hand.” Unbidden tears welled in his eyes. “She was trying to run the wrong way, it all happened so fast, it all happened so fast—”
“Help us, for pity’s sake, help us!” a man roared, slipping in the mud ankle deep all around, vainly trying to brace himself to get a shoulder behind one wheel. The heavy wagons, dragged askew by the strength of the water, were shoved in a muddle like children’s toys. One was completely overturned, bogged down in muck and debris and defying all the efforts of the carters to move it. A man moved feebly in the mire beneath it, pinned across the thighs, hands pushing ineffectually at the weight as agony twisted his face.
Blue light coalesced around him and everyone froze, even the trapped man. “Get ready to drag him out!” All heads turned to see an azure nimbus surrounding the mage. “Get ready,” he repeated with a touch of anger. Everyone bent to add a hand instantly.
Usara set his jaw. “Now!”
Sapphire light flared and lifted the cart, no more than a handspan but that was enough. We pulled and the carter came free, biting his lip on a howl of pain, legs limp and broken. I shared a glance of pity with Sorgrad. That man would be lucky to walk again. “So the wizard is good for something,” he commented and without too keen an edge to his voice.
Usara was breathing heavily. “Start gathering wood, everyone who can!”
“It’s all wet,” protested someone weakly out of the gloom. “It’ll never burn, not—”
“That doesn’t matter.” Usara flung a scarlet gout of flame from one hand into a tangle of mud-covered brush. It burned as if he’d smashed a flagon of lamp oil on it. Awestruck, people gazed for a moment before throwing splintered branches and the wreckage of a carriage on top.
“He’s a good man for a bad day, your wizard,” ’Gren commented cheerily.
I rounded on him. “Saedrin’s stones, where did you get to? I thought you were drowned!”
“Not possible.” ’Gren winked at me. “Sheltya said I was born to be hanged.”
“Over here, over here!” Shouts of exultation and anguish came from the far margin of the forest. I ran with ’Gren, slipping on silty grass, stumbling on nameless debris. Soaked and filthy people were trying to pull apart a weed-wrapped mess of muddy cloth washed up against the broken body of some hapless horse. A child was pulled free, crying and bloodied, passed to its distraught mother. Two more coughing figures were being helped up by kindly hands, then led away vomiting and stumbling on shaking legs. Zenela was at the bottom of the heap, face pale and still, carried off by the flood like a drowned kitten.
“Get her to the fire.” Sorgrad pushed past me, digging Zenela’s limp body free of the clinging soil. The reluctant earth released her with a sucking noise of disappointment and muddy water oozed from her mouth and nose. We carried her to the fire and laid her gently down. I wondered if we should be laying her out.
“Usara!” yelled Frue, cradling Zenela’s unresponsive head in his arms.
“Where did you find her?” Usara knelt and put one ear to her mouth, light fingers on her neck to measure the beat of her blood. He grimaced and briskly ripped open her bodice, one impersonal hand on her breast above her heart. “Lay her flat.”
Using his other hand to tilt Zenela’s head back, Usara closed his eyes in concentration. Her skin was still stark white in the firelight. Usara lifted his hand and her chest rose slowly, following the wizard’s movement. Her bluish lips parted, a faint radiance showing air at the mage’s command forcing itself down her throat. The rest of us held our breath. Usara continued, moving the girl’s ribs for her, reminding her body how to breathe. A warm glow settled over her, coaxing the chill from her bones.
“Rub her hands, her legs.” The mage nodded abruptly at Sorgrad and me. I hurried to comply but Zenela’s wet fingers felt dead between my palms, cold and unresisting. Sorgrad chafed her feet, face emotionless. Usara looked up sharply to stare at him before fixing his attention on his task.
After half an eternity, Zenela coughed, her eyes rolling in her head.
“Keep her sitting up and wrap her warmly,” Usara told Frue.
Zenela coughed again and suddenly spewed great gouts of fetid water over both of them, racked with spasm after spasm. I moved hurriedly backward.
“Will she be all right?” I caught at Usara’s arm.
“Perhaps.” He looked grim. “Her lungs might fill with water again, it can happen after a drowning—” He shook his head. “Let’s hope she has a strong constitution.”
“What about Castle Pastamar? The Solurans have this aetheric lore in their healing.” Zenela hadn’t exactly endeared herself to me but I wasn’t about to risk Drianon’s disfavor by not doing my part to help her.
“We can’t get anyone to Pastamar unless we can get across this thrice-cursed river,” scowled Usara.
I gazed at the torrent. The sturdy pillars once carrying the last ambition of the Tormalin Empire were ragged stumps of broken masonry. The bridgekeeper’s hut was a roofless ruin of tumbled blocks, the man assuredly dead within it, and the little shrine to Trimon had been completely washed away.
“Will the water rise up again?” I heard a tremor out of my voice that demanded a comforting arm.
“It shouldn’t have risen in the first place!” Usara glared angrily upstream. “I simply don’t understand it. I took soundings from the river, I included the rate of snowmelt, the fact that the ground is so saturated—” He broke off, shaking his head. “It’s all so different out here—you’d be better served by a water mage.”
“You’re the only wizard we’ve got,” I said rather more forcefully than I intended.
“Yes, I suppose I am.” Usara’s narrow shoulders sagged a little. “I should certainly have worked a more effective defense—”
“That’s not what I meant,” I objected.
“Who died and got you elected king?” demanded ’Gren in the same breath, draping my own good cape over my shoulders, ruined, filthy but warm from the fire.
“Those of us with magical talents have a responsibility to use them for the greater good,” said Usara, faint hurt in his voice.
“So you stopped me and Sorgrad drowning like mice in a drain,” I said robustly. Drianon save me, these wizards did take themselves seriously.
“Come and get something warm to drink,” ’Gren urged us both.
Usara shook his head. “I need to see how the water’s affected the ford.” He rolled a weave of ocher light between his hands and stared at the water. “This simply should not have happened.” He stalked off, muttering to himself.
I found the wizard’s uncertainty profoundly disturbing and found a handy target for my irritation in ’Gren. “Where did you get to?”
He gave me a friendly hug. “See that outcrop? Up like a rat on a granary wall, that’s where!”
I looked at our raiders, three dispirited figures trying to pick apart a sodden tangle of harness. Two filthy and sweating ponies were hobbled alongside them.
“The flood washed their baggage clean away,” said ’Gren with spurious innocence.
I narrowed my eyes. “Where to?”
“A handy crevice up yonder,” he admitted.
“Did you get a chance to look inside?” I couldn’t help asking.