‘Fuck!’ she cried, allowing Kylon to pull her to her feet.
They ran for the stairs, picking up guards and staff along the way. Shella issued a constant stream of orders, and soon as many were rushing away to carry out their new duties, as there were joining her. Most were sent to rustle up squads of workers to check every water supply and well in the city, while Shella herself was headed straight for the river. It had been sixteen days since the level of the waterway had fallen away to nothing, and eight since the battle for the Northern Heights. There had been no major assaults from the Rahain side following that confrontation. As Shella had predicted, winged gaien patrols had flown by several times during the day after the battle, scanning the heights, and watching as the Rakanese army solidified their defences along the ridge.
‘They’re preparing to attack,’ she yelled to Kylon, as they raced down the stairs and into the courtyard.
Shattered roof tiles lay strewn across the ground, across which a large ragged crack had appeared, splitting the brick cobbles. They ran through the arch and into the street, which was thick with dazed and injured civilians. She pushed her way to Palace Square, noticing plumes of smoke rise above the tall blocks of the city.
‘We need to organise fire teams!’
‘Let the government deal with that,’ Kylon called back as they ran. ‘You should be thinking about the army.’
She skidded to a halt in the middle of the square, while all around, her aides tried to stop. A few slipped and fell, while Shella stood, her fingers rubbing her forehead.
‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘I need to think.’
She started moving again, this time walking.
‘First, the earthquake,’ she said. ‘Rijon said that their stone mages couldn’t make one here, because we built the city on clay, not rock.’
‘I remember he said that the bedrock was too far away for any one mage to reach,’ Polli said.
‘Right,’ Shella said. ‘They must have gathered every fucking mage in lizardland to pull that off. We have to assume that if they can do it once, they can do it again. But why now?’
They reached the canal which ran along the palace side of the square, and there was a collective groan. The water level in the canal had dropped by at least four feet, and was still falling. A team of city workers was already trying to mend the wooden sluice gate at the far end of the canal where it met the river but, judging by the cracked and torn planks, Shella guessed that most of the water would be lost before the leaks were repaired.
She gazed into the canal as they walked, seeing her hopes drain away. She knew she could expend her powers, and save this one solitary canal, but it was pointless. She didn’t have the physical energy to save even a small fraction of the other pools and sealed waterways across the city.
By now they were almost at the river, and the press and bustle of maintenance and repair workers increased. All along both banks, she could see springs leaking from every dam and gate, their fresh water spilling into the cracked mud of the dry riverbed. Her guards and staff fell into silence as they stared at the sight of their water being sucked down into the parched earth.
Shella felt a hand tug her sleeve.
It was her sister Tehna the priestess, the only sibling that Shella had allowed to stay with the queen in the palace, after she had removed Dannu and Pavu from power.
‘Mage sister,’ she said, her face red from running. ‘Please come quickly to the palace. The queen needs your help.’
‘Is her well damaged?’
‘Yes,’ Tehna said, her voice fraught with fear, ‘but that doesn’t matter. It’s the spawn pool, Shella, one side of it has cracked, and the water is draining away. Obli’s spawn will die!’
Shella stared at Tehna, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster that was unfolding. She turned to Kylon, but he wasn’t paying any attention. Instead, he was gazing up-river, with the same expression on his face that he had been wearing the moment before the earthquake struck.
‘Kylon?’ she said. ‘What are you looking at?’
‘Something’s coming,’ he said, in a tone that caused several of her staff to stare at him. Shella looked up the river bed to the west, straining her eyes, but could see nothing unusual. Then she noticed a spiral of birds, all rising up from the course of the river. Hundreds, thousands of black specks swirling and dancing in the distance, all flying up and away from the river.
Then she heard a rumble.
‘Kylon!’ she said. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I think,’ the big man said, ‘we should step back from the riverbank.’
The rumble increased, like the roar of a giant wave. By now, everybody on both banks had stopped what they were doing, and had turned to stare up-river.
Shella stood, transfixed, her mouth open.
Kylon gasped.
‘We have to go!’ he called out. ‘We need to leave, now!’
Shella couldn’t move.
She saw it too, a giant wall of mud surging down the river towards them. Already its powerful current had taken it past the edges of the city, and the deluge was flooding both banks in a thunderous wave.
‘Run!’ Shella screamed, as all around people panicked, their cries drowned out by the roar of the massive surge sweeping towards the centre of the city.
Shella coughed. That smell. Her mage powers sent out feelers into the approaching wall, and her senses sickened as she felt the poisons that saturated the mass of mud. Arsenic, lead and mercury, all in concentrated amounts, enough to kill anything that drank or swam in it. She pulled her flow powers back to her body as her knees gave way.
Kylon caught her arm, and started to drag her away from the river.
‘It’s poisoned,’ she gasped, her voice a whisper amid the sky-breaking roar of the current of mud. The earth began to shake again, just as the wall of mud hit the central docks and bridges, ripping through them in a second. Shella and Kylon toppled to the ground, as the cobbles buckled and rippled, the cacophony of grinding brick competing with the thundering river of mud.
As the vibrations slowed and stopped, Shella felt big arms pick her up, and carry her.
Kylon held her close as he barged his way from the crumbling dockside. The roar of the current of mud grew deafening. Kylon leapt over a fissure, his boots crunching on the broken ground, while Shella gripped onto him with all her strength. They reached the square, which was packed with fleeing Rakanese. Terror consumed everyone, a mass hysterical panic. Anyone who slipped to the ground was trampled by those around them, and Kylon’s bulk and strength were the only things keeping the same from happening to Shella. The palace gates were closed, and the two soldiers guarding the gatehouse tower levelled their spears as they neared them. Without wasting a second, Kylon tossed them aside like dolls, and charged through the door. He kept moving, finding the stairs to the upper level and sprinting up them. Reaching the battlement at the top of the tower, Kylon came to a halt, and lowered Shella onto the flat rooftop.
She ran to the edge and looked out over the square, just as the mud wall hit the docks where they had been standing only moments before. The thick brown sludge crashed down in a giant wave over the low quayside, sending a tidal surge of dark mud six feet high across the bank of the river, sweeping everything in its path. The screams from those trapped in the square rose to where Kylon and Shella gazed down in horror. The wave of mud reached right up to the palace gates, before splashing down and rolling a few more feet, covering more than half of the square. Hundreds of bodies, covered in brown mud, lay bobbing and floating upon the sludge.
Shella started to cry, and she felt Kylon’s arm pull her near.
The noise of the wave faded, as it was borne away eastward.
Shella was shaking. ‘Kylon,’ she croaked, her mouth dry and bitter.
He squeezed her, saying nothing.
‘What have they done?’ she cried, hearing her own hysterical voice, and hardly recognising it. ‘Polli, Tehna… all of them,
all of them. What have they done?’
The mud below them was starting to drain away, leaving behind a thick, dark residue staining the cobbles, its surface glimmering with an oily, metallic sheen, and littered with debris and corpses. A few living Rakanese, covered in sludge, were crawling towards the untouched half of the square, where thousands were gathered, lamenting and weeping. The river level had returned to beneath the height of the ruined docks, and was flowing rapidly. Every bridge in the city had been destroyed, along with the tied-up barges and boats, and every quay and pier. The side-canals, which an hour earlier had been filled with fresh water, were now thick with tarry sludge, their sluice gates wrecked and hanging loose, their dams breached.
Kylon touched her arm, and pointed upwards. She gazed into the sky and saw, amid the pillars of smoke rising from the city, several winged gaien, circling overhead.
‘They’re watching us,’ he muttered.
A hatred filled her, a hatred unlike anything she had experienced before.
‘Fucking Rahain bastards.’
‘Aye.’
‘You tried to warn me.’
‘Even if you’d believed me,’ he said, ‘you couldn’t have stopped this.’
‘We’re finished.’
‘Maybe.’
She remembered her sister.
‘Obli,’ she cried. ‘The palace!’
They ran back down the steps, and into the gardens ringing the palace. No one challenged them as they raced through the parched orchards to the main doors. Once inside, a captain of the queen’s guard saw them.
‘High Mage!’ she called out. ‘This way, the queen needs you!’
They fell in with the captain and her guards, and hurried towards Obli’s private quarters.
‘Did you see what happened?’ the captain asked, a wild edge to her voice.
‘Yeah,’ Shella replied. ‘Does the queen know?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘The last I saw, she was by the spawning pool, in the basement. I was sent up to await your arrival. Where is Priestess Tehna?’
‘She was at the dockside when the wall of mud hit us.’
The captain looked away, her face distraught.
They carried on in silence, the only sound coming from the clanking and jangling of the guards’ armour and weapons. The officer led them down a set of stairs, and they followed a corridor through the basement, where Obli and her aides had lived for thirds, to be next to the wells and spawn pool. The entire level had been tiled, in blue and white.
Shella knew something was wrong from the faint chemical smell pervading the air. She quickened her step. She hadn’t seen the queen in many thirds, since she had left Silverstream, and she had never once laid eyes on her children-spawn.
There was a scream.
The captain looked at Shella, and they began to run.
They burst through the door into the spawning room. The small pool was in one corner, and there stood Obli, her white gown drenched, a bloody knife in one hand. To her right, crouching on the floor, a young woman was holding her arm and crying, blood dripping from a wound near her wrist.
‘I told you to stay away!’ Obli shouted at her, rage lighting up her eyes. ‘No one goes near my babies until the mage gets here.’
‘Obli!’ Shella called out across the chamber.
Her sister looked at her, her expression transforming from anger to desperate hope.
‘Clear the way!’ the queen commanded, and a dozen terrified nurses and servants shuffled aside.
Shella ran all the way to the pool, and nearly vomited in horror. She slipped on the blood, landing painfully on her knees, as her gorge rose. She put her hand to her mouth. She heard Kylon halt beside her, and curse deeply.
On the still, oily surface of the pool, all nine of Obli’s spawn-babies were floating, dead. The water level had dropped, and the pool was only half full, but a black, viscous liquid was seeping in through a dozen small cracks, poisoning the water. Shella poured her mage senses into the small bodies, trying to feel for any life, but it was too late, and she was nearly overwhelmed by the presence of so many contaminants.
‘Obli!’ Shella cried. ‘I’m sorry, Obli, they’re dead!’
Her sister turned to her in fury. ‘You are the high mage!’ she screamed. ‘Revive them! I order you!’
‘I can’t,’ Shella sobbed. ‘It’s too late.’
Obli’s face twisted in grief, and she lunged at Shella, her knife out-stretched.
Kylon pushed Shella to the side, and struck Obli’s arm, sending the knife spinning across the tiled floor.
‘You will suffer for that!’ Obli shouted. ‘Arrest them both!’
As the guards looked at each other, Kylon acted. He drew his longsword, and pulled Shella in close to his left side, his arm gripping her.
He began edging his way to the door.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Obli screamed. ‘Kill them!’
The guards drew their bows, and Kylon ran, lifting Shella off her feet as he barrelled his way through the chamber. Crossbow bolts whistled past them, and Shella heard Kylon grunt once, then twice, but his footsteps never faltered, and they crashed through a final pair of guards at the doors.
Kylon fell to his knees as Shella slammed the door shut, jamming its lock with a fallen pike.
‘Can you run?’ she asked him, trying to ignore the two bolts protruding from his back.
Kylon grimaced. ‘I hope you know a quick way out of here,’ he muttered, hauling himself to his feet.
Ten days had elapsed since the Rahain had released the river of poisoned mud, and transformed the settlement of Akhanawarah into a city of the dead. Tens of thousands had perished in the initial wave, drowned or swept away, and thousands every day since, poisoned by contact with the toxins that had seeped into nearly every water supply that remained. There were some sealed, unaffected cisterns supplied solely by rainwater, but these were too few to meet the needs of the city’s inhabitants.
All the precious spawn-children were dead, or dying, their pools unable to keep out the contaminants. Their attendant lower-level flow mages had been overwhelmed by the rush of toxins, helpless to stop the poisoning of the feeding water. Those few spawn that survived had been moved to a rain cistern, but were sickly and weak, and no one held out much hope for them.
With every bridge destroyed, the city had been split in two, and it was only now that some were venturing across on rebuilt barges, to rejoin their loved ones, or in search of food and water. The river itself was running clearer and cleaner. A few hours after the deluge, the sludge had been replaced with fresher water coming down from the mountains, but it would take years, perhaps decades before the river would fully recover. The metals and other contaminants had spread into the earth all around, using the Rakanese-built waterways to reach the orchards and rice fields, and poisoning the land, killing all of the trees and crops.
Fires burned daily, as relatives tried to cremate their dead, but it was never enough, and the bodies piled high in the streets, by the side of every canal, and thrown into every cracked and poisoned well. Extreme thirst was forcing people to drink even the most polluted water, and many died silent and lonely deaths in their beds, ill and fevered from the toxins in their blood.
Shella had retreated to her tenement, where she had blockaded herself in, along with all of the building’s survivors that she could find. Bowda was still alive, and working every hour of the day for her, trying to piece control of the city together. Her fears for Polli, however, had proved correct. She had been drowned by the deluge, along with Braga, and Tehna.
There was an enormous cistern carved out of the clay beneath the tenement, fed by dozens of nearby rain gutters. The water was rank and stagnant, but contained none of the toxins that were laying the city low, and the block’s inhabitants queued gratefully each day for their ration.
The only people who seemed unaffected by the poisons, who seemed to be able to drink any water without ill effect, were
her Kellach Brigdomin. Kylon, whom she had been convinced was going to die after being shot twice during their escape from the palace, was already back on his feet, looking gaunt but well, and eating everything he could find. She had watched throughout the night as his fevered body had seemed to expel the toxins through the two bolt holes in his back, and she guessed that his people had an almost mage-like power to heal themselves, although to them it just seemed normal, and it was the Rakanese they considered weak.
So healthy were they amid such sickness, that Shella had them running the whole building, defending the gates and cistern, doling out the daily rations, and providing reports from their frequent scouting trips out into the city.
It was from them that Shella had learned that the Rahain army had attacked one night, a few days after the deluge, and re-taken the Northern Heights. The news had been confirmed when a trickle of exhausted and wounded soldiers had staggered down the hill the next morning. General Darra had been killed in the surprise assault, along with nearly half of the division. All that day, Shella had awaited the start of the expected bombardment, but it didn’t come, and she realised that the Rahain had only moved to ensure that the Rakanese could not flee the city. The siege continued. All the Rahain had to do was wait, and the city would die.
The stench of death and corruption was everywhere, and Shella had taken to wearing a perfume-soaked handkerchief over her mouth and nose so she could cope, though her spirit was breaking, and she was starting to wish for an end to it all.
‘We should do as he says, Shella,’ Sami said. He looked withdrawn, and his skin was grey. His stomach and guts were perforated and swollen, and when he coughed there was blood on his lips.
‘No,’ she said, barely listening.
‘We have to get out of the city!’ Sami spluttered, clenching his chest in pain. ‘Kylon can get us out.’
‘How many fucking times do I have to tell you?’ Shella exploded. ‘I’m not abandoning the people. There are still thousands alive! I’m not going unless we can all go.’
‘But most are too ill to move,’ Clodi said. She was still in good health, though always thirsty, having never strayed from the tenement since the siege had begun.
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