“Valentine!”
A face, inches from his own. Eyes looking into his. A voice, crying a name that he thought he knew, and crying it again.
“Valentine! Valentine!”
A hand gripping his arm. Shaking him, pushing him.
Whose face? Whose eyes? Whose voice? Whose hand?
“He seems in a trance, Elidath.”
Another voice. Lighter, clearer, close by his side. Carabella? Yes. Carabella. Who was Carabella?
“There’s not enough air in here. Vents choked by sand—we’ll smother if we don’t drown!”
“Can we get out?”
“Through the safety hatch. But we’ve got to snap him out of this. Valentine! Valentine!”
“Who is it?”
“Elidath. What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“You seem half asleep. Here, let me get that safety belt loose. Get up, Valentine! Get up. The floater’s going to sink in another five minutes.”
“Ah.”
“Valentine, please, listen to him!” It was the other voice, the light one, the Carabella voice. “We’re turning over and over. We have to get out of here and swim to shore. It’s the only hope we have. One of the floaters has already gone down, and we can’t see the other one, and—oh, Valentine, please! Stand up! Take a deep breath! That’s it. Another. Another. Here, give me your hand—hold his other one, Elidath; we’ll lead him to the hatch—there—there—just keep moving, Valentine—”
Yes. Just keep moving. Valentine became aware of tiny currents of air flowing past his face. He heard the faint spattering of sand as it fell from above. Yes. Yes. Crawl up here, wriggle past this, put your foot here, the other one here—step—step—hold this—pull— pull—
He clambered upward like an automaton, still only vaguely comprehending what was taking place, until he reached the top of the emergency ladder and poked his head out through the safety hatch.
A sudden blast of fresh air—hot, dry, thick with sand—swept brutally across his face. He gasped, breathed sand, swallowed sand, gagged, spat. But he was awake again. Clinging to the flange that rimmed the hatch, he stared out into the storm-riven night. The darkness was intense; the weird glow had greatly diminished; sprays of sand still whipped unrelentingly through the air, one howling vortex after another, battering against his eyes, his nostrils, his lips.
It was almost impossible to see. They were somewhere in midriver, but neither the eastern nor western bank was visible. The floater was tipped high on end, in an awkward and precarious way, rising half its length out of the savage chaos of the river. There was no sign of the other floaters. Valentine thought he saw heads bobbing about in the water, but it was hard to be sure: the sand veiled everything and merely to keep his eyes open was an agony.
“Down here! Jump, Valentine!” Elidath’s voice.
“Wait,” he called. He looked back. Carabella stood below him on the ladder, pale, frightened, almost dazed. He reached for her and she smiled when she saw that he had returned to himself, and he pulled her up beside him. She came in one quick bound and balanced beside him on the rim of the hatch, agile as an acrobat, no less trim and sturdy than she had been in her juggling days.
The sand choking the air was unendurable. They locked their arms together and jumped.
Hitting the water was like striking a solid surface. For a moment he clung to Carabella, but as they landed she was ripped from him. Valentine felt himself pushing down through the water until he was all but engulfed in it; then he kicked downward and recoiled and forced his way to the top. He called out for Carabella, Elidath, Sleet, but he saw no one, and even down here there was no place to hide from the sand, which fell like a burdensome rain and thickened the river to a diabolical turbidity.
I could almost walk to shore on this, Valentine thought.
He made out the dim hugeness of the floater to his left, sliding slowly downward into the water: there was still enough air in it to give it some buoyancy, and the bizarre, puddinglike consistency of the sand-glutted river provided some slight resistance to its entry, but yet the floater was plainly sinking, and Valentine knew that when it went under entirely it would kick up a perilous backlash nearby. He struggled to get away, looking about all the while for his companions.
The floater vanished. A great wave rose and struck him.
He was thrust under, came up briefly, went down again as a second wave hit him and then an eddying whirlpool sucked at his legs. He felt himself being swept downstream. His lungs were afire: full of water, full of sand? The apathy that had come over him aboard the doomed floater was altogether gone from him now; he kicked, wriggled, fought to stay afloat. He collided with someone in the darkness, clutched at him, lost hold, went under again. This time nausea overwhelmed him, and he thought he would never come up; but he felt strong arms seize him and begin to tow him, and he let himself go limp, for he understood that this frantic resistance to the river was an error. He breathed more easily, and drifted easily at the surface. His rescuer released him, disappearing into the night, but Valentine saw now that he was close to one of the river’s banks, and in a stunned, weary way he pulled himself forward until he felt his waterlogged boots touching bottom. Slowly, as if he were marching through a river of syrup, he plodded shoreward, emerged on the muddy bank, and dropped down face first. He wished he could burrow like the gromwark into the wet earth and hide until the storm had passed by.
After a time, when he had caught his breath, he sat up and looked about. The air was still gritty with sand, but not so much so that he needed to cover his face, and the wind definitely seemed to be subsiding. A few dozen yards downstream from him lay one of the floaters, beached at the river’s edge; he saw nothing of the other two. Three or four limp figures were sprawled nearby; alive or dead, he could not say. Voices, faint and dim, resounded in the distance. Valentine was unable to tell whether he was on the Piurifayne side of the river or the Gihorna, though he suspected he was in Piurifayne, for it seemed to him that a wall of all but impenetrable foliage rose just behind him.
He got to his feet.
“Lordship! Lordship!”
“Sleet? Here!”
The small, lithe figure of Sleet appeared out of the darkness. Carabella was, with him, and Tunigorn not far behind. Solemnly Valentine embraced each of them. Carabella was shivering uncontrollably, though the night was warm, and had grown humid now that the parched wind had blown itself out. He drew her against him, and tried to brush away the patches of wet sand that clung to her clothes, as to his, like a thick constricting crust.
Sleet said, “My lord, two of the floaters are lost, and I think a good many of their passengers with them.”
Valentine nodded grimly. “So I fear. But surely not all!”
“There are some survivors, yes. As I came to you I heard their voices. Some—I have no idea how many—scattered along both banks. But you must prepare yourself, my lord, for losses. Tunigorn and I saw several bodies along the shore, and very likely there are others who were swept downstream and drowned far away. When morning comes we’ll know more.”
“Indeed,” Valentine said, and fell silent a while. He sat crosslegged on the ground, more like a tailor than a king, and fell into a long silence, drawing his hand idly through the sand that lay heaped as though it were some strange kind of snow to a depth of some inches on the ground. There was one question he dared not ask, but after a time he could no longer keep it within himself. He glanced up at Sleet and Tunigorn and said, “What news is there of Elidath?”