The current grabbed them instantly, and swept the boat out into the center of the river. Its bow twisted around, streamlining it against the current, and they were soon moving past the remains of San.
They were moving too fast to stand and stare.
“We need to get over to the other side,” Kosar said, standing on the bow, legs propped wide. He looked across at where the flood had burst through the banks. Less that a hundred steps would take them to safe ground.
“The river’s got us,” Trey said. “It’s hungry. It’ll carry us uphill until the back-surge sets in. The wave coming down will be ten times the one we just saw, twenty, a hundred. ”
“We won’t be here when that happens,” Kosar said.
“Oh? And how do you-”
“Stop whining and start thinking, that’s how,” Hope said. A’Meer raised her eyebrows at Kosar and glanced skyward-he was glad to see the humor there, it comforted him and saved him after the dreadful sights of the past hour-and then she started stamping at the deck.
“What the hell are you doing?” Trey shouted. The noise unsettled the two horses and they stamped their hooves in sympathy.
A plank of wood suddenly sprang free of rusted nails, and A’Meer caught it before it fell back. Hefting it in both hands, she walked to port and started rowing. “Paddle,” she said.
Kosar, Trey and Hope prised planks from around the gap A’Meer had already created. Within two minutes they had lined up along the port side of the boat and started paddling, turning its nose slowly for shore. The current drove them on but was not strong enough to fight their combined effort, and gradually they came closer to where the old riverbank lay.
They found it with a crunch that almost tore the bottom from the boat. Kosar and Hope went sprawling, while Trey and A’Meer had to clutch at each other to keep their balance. The horses skidded across the wet timbers, snorting in fear, but A’Meer grabbed both sets of reins and talked in a low, calming voice, soothing them. As soon as the boat had grounded firmly A’Meer was over the side, up to her thighs in water and leading the horses out and away from the river. They tried to rear up in panic, but her soothing continued, and she kept eye contact with them as much as she could. They seemed calmed by that. Kosar smiled; he knew how they felt.
The water was trying to tug the boat back into the river-it seemed to be flowing even faster now, as if the waters were keen to force themselves up into the mountains-and Kosar did his best to keep it grounded while Trey and Hope heaved first Rafe and then Alishia out. They held them out of the water and struggled across to where A’Meer waited, and she helped them lift the two unconscious forms up onto the horses. Rafe stirred as they moved him, trying to aid them with weak attempts to pull himself up into the saddle. Alishia was like a corpse, only lighter.
Kosar let go of the boat and stepped back, allowing the river to grab the stern and twist it around the pivot of the grounded bow. Lighter now by six people and two horses, it was snatched from the shore and taken out into the stream. He went to A’Meer and took the reins of a horse from her, patting its nose when it seemed to object to its change of master.
“Let’s go,” A’Meer said. She was aiming for a spread of higher ground a few hundred steps inland, a place where trees still stood free of the flood and a few small animals milled, frightened and confused. Nobody disagreed with the Shantasi. As if successfully crossing the river had instilled a new sense of urgency, there was no petty arguing about which way to go or how to get there. They all knew that the Red Monks were on the river and heading their way, and now that they were on the other side the need to put distance between themselves and San was great. The Monks would expect them to be coming from the north. Now that they had crossed and could head south, it was just possible that they might fool them and have a clear run to New Shanti.
But Kosar knew just how vain this thought was. He had seen a Red Monk in action, and he knew how persistent they were, how committed. He and the others may well have crossed the flooded river, but there were still three hundred miles of wild terrain between them and Hess, including the Mol’Steria Desert. If the Monks had sent so many of their number upriver, there must be other complements traveling in from a different direction, spreading across the land, searching.
The two horses seemed strong, and they carried the prone forms of Rafe and Alishia with ease. A’Meer was tireless, even after the terrible wounds and infections of the past couple of days; perhaps Rafe’s magical touch had done more than cure her. Trey seemed distant, never keen to meet Kosar’s eye. Hope stayed as close to Rafe’s horse as possible, reaching out now and again to touch him, looking around at the others with barely concealed suspicion. Kosar worried about her. It seemed that she was constantly there, awaiting any dregs of magic that Rafe might throw off, ready to take them into herself. In her eyes, below the suspicion, there lay a deep-rooted madness.
Kosar no longer wondered just how he had come to be mixed up in this. He pushed through the water with the others, sometimes slipping and going beneath the muddy surface, shivering at its coolness, trying not to see the dead things bobbing all around. More and more his eyes strayed to Rafe. More and more he believed that the future of Noreela lay on the back of this stolen horse.
HOPE WALKED ALONGSIDERafe, reaching out every now and then to touch him and make sure he was still real. He had long been in her dreams; she was afraid that he would vanish.
So the Shantasi was taking them to her people. Much as Hope hated that idea, she knew it to be the only logical one. The Shantasi were mysterious and powerful, a race apart in Noreela, and if anyone could protect and nurture this new magic, they could.
But once there, the boy would be gone. What would they want with an old witch? They would likely cast her out into the Mol’Steria Desert.
So she walked, her mind in turmoil and her allegiance only to herself. She was terrified of Rafe. She loved Rafe. Perhaps when her mind settled, she could decide her own best course of action.
LATER THAT DAY, when they had cleared the farthest extremes of the flood and were traveling as fast as they could toward the River Cleur, they heard a great roar from back the way they had come. The River San had piled itself into the mountains over the preceding few hours, and now the flooded valleys, lakes and underground reservoirs let go in one powerful surge.
The ground shook. Looking back, they found their view occluded by great gray clouds, but they felt the power of the tidal wave scouring across the land, destroying any trace of their passing. Hopefully wiping out the Red Monks on the river too. Even they would surely not survive such a monstrous release of energy.
“I only hope that sweeps all the way across Lake Denyah,” A’Meer said. “Although I suspect the Monks’ Monastery is empty now.”
Rafe twitched in unconsciousness and whined, and his horse stamped its feet and shook its head, as if hearing something unthinkable in the sound.
RAFE WAS AFLOATin his own mind, unconscious of the outside, barely aware of himself. Fleeting memories came by, images of his parents and his time in Trengborne, and stronger images from the past few days. But behind all these loomed that great dark place, countless and limitless and endless, overshadowing everything with its promise and threat. When the river revolted, this dark place had screamed out, raging at the wrongness of things, and the scream had all but driven Rafe out of his mind. And like a parent giving its child a gift to apologize for some unconscious rage, Rafe had been allowed a bleed of magic to draw the old boat from the silty riverbed, guide it to shore, effect their escape. Even magic was possessed of a survival instinct.
Rafe was a speck in the multitude of existences he imagined. He floated through them like a small fish drifting in an endless, sunless sea, seeing evidence everywhere that the sea itself was alive and exuding power. Each sign was something different: a light; a speck darker than night; a song; a breeze in an autumn forest; a centipede three feet long. Countless images with countless meanings, and each of them whispered to him in a language he was beginning to understand. They babbled like children and hinted at knowledge older than time. There was a pent-up excitement and a wise concern in the voices; excitement at what was coming, concern at what had been. This was magic growing again, simmering and wallowing in its infinite womb, ready to reveal itself when the time was finally right.