by Tim Lebbon
“Then so are you?” Mella finished for her. Namior nodded.
Trakis placed his mug gently on the table, and none of them drank.
Someone burst back into the tavern, her hair made mad by the wind and rain plastered across her eyes and in her mouth. She wiped her face and Kel saw her eyes, the mixture of excitement and fear driving them wide. He'd seen such a look many times before, and he knew exactly what it meant: she had seen something she had never seen before.
“Something coming!” the woman said. “Out to sea, something out there, dark and big and fast!”
“What is it?” Mella asked.
“Don't know. Something.”
“Come on,” Kel said. He grabbed Namior's hand as the four of them headed for the door, skirting around the woman who evidently no longer wished to see.
“The ground's still moving,” Trakis said as he pulled the door open and stepped outside.
And it was. Kel paused for a beat and felt a vibration coming up through his bones, entering his feet and traveling all through his body, and when he pressed his teeth together it felt as though they were going to shatter. From behind, the musical rattle of wine bottles clacking together. From ahead, the sounds of the storm, and whatever else it had brought.
Namior squeezed his hand. She was outside now, arm outstretched, and he was suddenly desperate not to let go of her.
“Come on!” she shouted. “They've gone up the hill behind the tavern to see better!”
Kel realized that, other than Neak and the windswept woman, he was the only one still inside the Dog's Eyes. He stepped out into the storm.
NAMIOR SUDDENLY WANTED to be back home. Her mother was there, and her grandmother and great-grandmother, and they had seen something more than storm tonight, something they said was absent. If they'd sensed something more, perhaps she would not have been so afraid. More could be dealt with, seen, challenged. But nothing could be done with nothing.
Mella and Trakis were already up on the observation platform, leaning on the wall and staring over the harbor and out to sea. Namior held tightly to Kel's hand, desperate not to let go, and he ran up the steps behind her, drawing close.
“What is it?” he shouted before they had even reached the wall.
Namior shouldered in between Trakis and Mella, hearing the watchers shouting words that the wind stole away. Rain drove straight at them across the rooftops, and the water had a slightly smoky taste when it hit her tongue, as though it had picked up chimney smoke.
Kel stood behind her, held her arms and looked over her shoulder.
“Nothing,” Namior said, because when she looked out to sea, that was what she saw.
Down in the harbor, waves smashed against the mole and harbor wall. At the base of the cliffs on the other side of the River Pav, the sea gnashed and foamed like a diseased creature, striving to gnaw into the land. Past the mole were white crests, waves breaking and rolling and building again, surging in toward the village and promising chaos. Past the waves, out to sea, where clouds flashed but no lightning danced on the horizon, a wall of nothing seemed to be growing in the darkness.
“What is that?” Kel shouted.
Namior shrugged, comforted by the feel of his hands on her arms.
“End of the storm,” Trakis shouted. “Sea growing calm.”
“No,” Mella shouted, and Namior listened because the fisherwoman was wise to things of the sea. “Everything's about to get worse!” She looked up at Trakis, then across at Namior, and Kel standing behind her. When she next spoke it was no longer a shout, but still they all heard. “We should be safe up here.”
“A wave,” Namior said, understanding dawning at last. The thud, and now the wave. She'd heard of places far to the south near Kang Kang where the ground sometimes shrugged, cracked and turned over. Groundshakes, they were called, though many people thought they were the result of fledge demons deep underground, collapsing another seam of that strange drug.
Mother, she thought.
“They'll be fine,” Kel said into her ear, saying exactly what she wanted to hear. But how could he be sure? Namior glanced along the hillside at the chaos of rooftops, paths and courtyards, trying to place her house. It was slightly lower than the Dog's Eyes, she knew, but also closer to the harbor. Lower and closer . . . to that!
She could not look away from the wave for long. It was a blankness on the scene—an absence—a tall, dark space above the foam-capped waves close to land and below the boiling sky. And it was growing, coming closer and making itself known at last.
The ground shook. The air was filled with the taste of the sea. And a roar was rising, building quickly as the sound of this incoming disaster found the land and announced itself.
They could only stand there and watch. Namior thought of all the people she knew who would likely be down in the harbor: friends who lived there, others who worked through the night dealing with the day's catch. They'd have felt the thud, and now they would hear and see the wave. But it was already far too late.
There was a flash of red lightning across the horizon, as though the sky had been slashed.
The water in the harbor surged out to sea, leaving fishing boats resting on their hulls and tipped to the sides.
And then the wave came in.
FALLEN
A Bantam Spectra Book / May 2008
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2008 by Tim Lebbon
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Bantam Books, the rooster colophon, Spectra, and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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eISBN: 978-0-553-90506-9
www.bantamdell.com
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