Water seeped into the dungeons unnoticed except by those few unfortunates who were still imprisoned there. But when it made its way into the portions of the lower Palace that had been remodeled into a nursery for the Child of the Temple, Gyskouras, and Arton and their companions, it was another matter. A storm impelled by alien magics and a flood in their own chambers was not only a threat but an insult as well.
Gyskouras screamed. Arton, face darkening as his own daemon sprang to life within him, screamed louder. The other children who enjoyed the dubious honor of being their companions wept or cowered. Alfi lost completely the edge of superiority that two years' seniority should have given him and clung like a leech to Vanda, while Latilla covered her face with her hands and closed up her fingers each time the noise level rose again.
Seylalha shouted desperate orders as Vanda and the nursemaids scuttled frantically to move children and bedding up to the playroom by the roof garden while above the Palace the sky rumbled echoes of the storm-children's rage. Gyskouras picked up the vase that had been the gift of a royal ambassador and threw it; Arton grabbed a wooden horse and flung it back at him. Lightnings clashed outside and sizzled down the sides of buildings fortunately too watersoaked to burn.
Conflicting winds made a chaos of the orderly banks of cloud, shook the Beysib ships at anchor, plucked off roof tiles and uprooted trees, and folk who had watched the rise of the waters with a nagging dread now trembled with active fear.
And Roxane, sensing the chaos in the heavens, laughed, for this was more than she had hoped for. She changed her strategy, using her control of the elementals to hold back the waters, forcing them to spread sideways into the town.
Gilla could feel the force of the winds even through the witch's wards. Roxane was still secluded, but though her minions knew no particulars, they reflected her emotions, and the growing atmosphere of malicious glee terrified Gilla. What was happening in Sanctuary?
She bent over a crate into which she had dumped half a dinner service-worth of broken crockery which she had found behind the bags of mouldering roots in the pantry and shoved it across the room. What this house needed was not a broom, but a shovel! Still bent over, she glanced around her.
The two house snakes were curled contentedly in their baskets before the stove. Three thralled souls sat at the table, swaying reflexively. Snapper Jo stood between her and the kitchen door, sucking meditatively on an old bone.
He caught her glance and grinned. "Nice and clean! Mistress be pleased. Fat lady make house nice and clean and Mistress wash town!" Overcome with the wit of this observation, he began to laugh. "Wash all the children away, then Snapper Jo be fat lady's boy!"
Gilla clenched her hands in her apron to keep them from closing on the fiend's scrawny throat. At home, she would have thrown something-if she had been at home she would have been throwing things long ago! She felt fury boiling in her belly; she was a lidded kettle ready to explode. Shaking, she hefted the crate of shattered crockery and marched toward the door.
"Fat lady not go out-" Snapper Jo began.
"Great Mistress said to clean her house-I'm cleaning, you wart-upholstered cretin, so get out of my way!" Gilla said between set teeth.
The gray fiend frowned and moved an indecisive half-step, struggling to reconcile the contradictory ideas and unfamiliar vocabulary. Gilla shouldered him aside, shifted her weight, and kicked open the door. Watery light filtered through the shimmering underside of the protective bubble with which Roxane had warded her domain. Gilla took a deep breath of dank air, tensed, and heaved the crate outward with all the strength of her rage.
It arced up and outward, trailing a comet's tail of broken crockery, and burst through.
Gilla was already turning to send another load after it when she heard a sound like a tearing sheet and staggered beneath a gust of wind. Over her shoulder she glimpsed the last shards of the bubble whirling away on the storm.
The wind swept through the kitchen, upheaving the table so that Snapper Jo had to leap aside. Gilla picked up a trashbasket and flung it at one of the thralls, upended another over the serpents, saw the fiend recover and start toward her, and snatched up her broom. Another of the soul-thralls lurched forward. Her swing connected with its head and knocked it bleeding into Snapper Jo's arms.
Gilla steadied herself and cocked the broom for another swing, but the fiend's eyes were fixed on the trickle of red that crossed the thrall's skin. Bony fingers tightened and the body began to struggle. The Snapper's thin lips writhed back from his razor teeth.
"Fresh meat," he said thickly, and then, oblivious to the tumult around him, bent to feed.
Before anything else could come at her, Gilla kicked over the rest of the trashbaskets, launched herself through the door and slammed it behind her, and scrambled, panting, across a soggy wilderness of weeds. Before her loomed the rain-dark walls of the warehouses, and beyond them, the bridge, over the river, to home.
Lalo bent, shivering, grasped the end of the timber, and nodded to Wedemir. Together they hefted it, and staggered forward to the edge of the river where a Stepson, four burly men from the 3rd Commando, and a couple of scrawny youths from Zip's collection of toughs were trying to build a bulwark. It was a motley construction, cobbled together with wood from the market pens nearby, logs from half-drowned woods upriver, and anything else they could carry away.
Already water was lapping at the bank. There was no way to protect the low ground below the bridge, but if they could build a dyke northward from the bridge to the end of the old city wall, they might be able to save the middle part of town.
As others took the weight of the timber Lalo straightened, rubbing his back. Even Wedemir was panting, and he was young. Lalo wondered how much longer he could keep this up-it had been far too long since he had asked much of his muscles, and he feared they were betraying him now.
He looked numbly at the muddy serpent that was the river, heaving ominously as it digested what it had swallowed already and considered what next to devour. He was surprised it was not flowing faster, then realized that a south wind was holding back the waters and forcing them to spread rather than flowing harmlessly into the sea.
Witch-work, he thought grimly, and wondered how Randal was doing. It would take more than one Tysian mage to stop this. His shoulders sagged. He would have welcomed even a Rankan Storm-God's intervention now.
"Father-look at the bridge!" Wedemir shook his arm, shouting over the roar of the wind.
Lalo turned. He heard the moaning of overstressed timbers and saw the structure tremble as it was struck by an especially heavy surge. The waters were almost over the roadway now. Wedemir tugged at him again.
"There's somebody on it-someone's trying to get across!"
Lalo squinted into the rain. Wedemir must be mistaken -any Downwinder not already drowned like a rat in his hole must have sought higher ground by now. But there was certainly something moving there....
Something stirred in him like a flicker of flame. He moved toward the bridgehead and the movement warmed him so that he could go faster. Wedemir started to protest, then splashed after him.
"It's a person-a woman-" panted Wedemir.
Lalo nodded and began to run. He heard the groan of tortured wood clearly now. The bridge shuddered and the woman staggered, then plodded forward again, using the broom she carried as a staff. Her soaked gown clung to limbs with the massive strength of an archaic goddess; one could almost imagine that it was not the assault of the waters that made the bridge tremble, but her stride.