The Drowning City: The Necromancer Chronicles Book One (35 page)

The earthquakes had already weakened the foundations. A hairline fissure spread down the lower face of the dam, slowly leaking
threads of water. As they drew closer, she could make out people moving on the walkways and tower balconies.

When they were within range of normal eyes, a man ran from the northern tower. He looked around, probably for horses—Zhirin
wondered what he would have thought if he’d seen them land. “Lord al Seth, what’s happened?”

“The mountain has woken. Take your men and get out of here. Symir isn’t safe—keep to the Southern Bank and avoid the wind
from the west.”

“But the dam—”

“There’s nothing you can do for it now, and the earth may keep shaking. I’ll look after the dam.”

They waited as both towers emptied. The already skittish horses would have nothing to do with the causeway, and the guards
finally released those stabled in the northern tower.

“Are you sure about this?” Asheris asked as they watched the evacuation. Isyllt had barely spoken since they landed, only
stood in a weary daze, her mangled hands held against her chest.

“Can you think of any other way?”

His silence was answer enough.

When the last of the guards had vanished on the other side, Zhirin stepped onto the causeway across the top tier. The roar
of water through the sluices was deafening and she felt the force of it shivering through the stones beneath her feet.

The river was different here. The Mir she knew was soft-voiced, relentless but gentle, deep and dangerous but not angry. The
water behind the dam raged and surged, pushing against her prison, constantly searching for a way out, a way free. She tasted
of stone and snowmelt, carried dizzying images of falls and cataracts, of soaring mountains and jagged crags and the distant
lands beyond them.

Zhirin closed her eyes and listened, let the river’s voice fill her, let her intentions spill out. She wasn’t sure how long
she stood there, but when she opened her eyes again the eastern sky had begun to gray and she knew what she needed to do.

“I’m no engineer,” Asheris said when she returned to the bank, “but I think we can manage to open the floodgates.”

Zhirin shook her head. “It’s not enough. She wants freedom. Can you break the dam?”

He and Isyllt looked at each other, dark face and white wearing identical frowns.

“I can find the faults,” Isyllt said at last, “but I’m too weak to do much else.” Her mouth twisted at the admission.

Asheris smiled wryly. “Show them to me and I can exploit them. This is a day of breaking bonds.”

“And everything else,” muttered Isyllt, touching her swollen lip.

Zhirin stood in the center of the causeway while Asheris and Isyllt went about their work. She couldn’t bear to watch the
plumes of ash in the western sky, the rain of cinders; instead she bent her head and let the river’s dark thoughts fill her.

She knew what was needed. What was demanded. It was a much lower price than the mountain had claimed. And when she thought
of her city burning behind her, of Jabbor’s forests, it was easy to agree.

He would understand, she thought. And even if he didn’t, this was better. Her love of the river was older than her feelings
for him, older than her desire for the cunning sorceries of the Kurun Tam. Still, she was glad she’d known both. Even glad
she’d met Isyllt, when she thought about it. Gladder still to know that she wouldn’t grow as cold and heartless.

She searched in her purse, found the wooden comb Suni had given her. It took a moment to free her braids; ash and bits of
leaves fluttered loose. As soon as the teeth touched her hair the water answered, waves rising and strengthening. Somewhere
in the churning depths in front of her she felt spirits stir, glimpsed pale mottled faces and long weed-green hair.

Sister
, they called.
Sisterdaughtermotherriver.

“We’re ready,” Isyllt called soon after. “Get clear.”

“No.” The strength of her voice surprised her. “This is where I need to be.”

She saw understanding in their faces. “Are you sure?” Isyllt’s voice was much gentler than she’d ever heard before.

“You don’t have to,” Asheris said. Not arguing or pleading, and she was grateful for it.

“No. But this will be best.”

The lake surged and roiled, waves crashing against stone, high enough that their spray slicked her face. The voices of the
reed-maidens filled her head.

“I’m ready,” she told them. “Do it.”

Asheris and Isyllt clasped hands, and she felt the magic gathering beneath her. She waved once in farewell, then turned back
to the waiting water.

“Mother,” she whispered, and wasn’t sure if she meant Fei Minh or the Mir. Her hands tightened on the railing, rust scraping
her palms. No, that wasn’t the way. She inhaled a damp breath, blew out her fear as the lower dam crumbled with a roar.

The causeway shattered.

She raised her arms and opened them to the oncoming wall of water. It hurt for an instant, as the impact broke her limbs,
drove shards of rib into her lungs, but the river took the pain.

The river took everything.

D
ark and fast, the river runs, thick with flotsam—jagged stone and bits of iron spinning in the current before they sink into
the mud; a girl’s shattered body; a daughter’s soul cradled in her mother’s arms. Water rushes over the banks. Spirits ride
the surge, ecstatic in their freedom.

The river rages, decades of anger unleashed, tempered by a daughter’s grief, a daughter’s hope. A daughter’s bargain.

The mountain shakes, heaving the river in her bed, undoing centuries of patient carving. Fish and snakes writhe in upthrust
mud; slime glistens on bones and stones hidden for hundreds of years. The water tastes of ash, of hot stone, of blood and
brimstone.

Boats snap their moorings and capsize, throwing screaming passengers into the roar and rush. That part of the river that was
a girl mourns each snuffed and broken life, but knows she cannot save them all. Mud rushes down the flanks of the shaking
mountain, adds its weight to the flood.

In the city, canals burst out of their banks, water sweeping over streets and sidewalks. A bull kheyman washes onto the steps
of a house, roaring his outrage. The earth trembles and a bridge shudders and gives way. In the Floating Garden, potted trees
break their tethers and bob away, shedding leaves and branches into the hungry current. In Straylight, buildings groan and
slide, bricks and mortar raining into the floodwaters. In the harbor, the sea already churns, vexed to tempest by the earth’s
upheaval. Caught between wave and flood, docks splinter, ships founder and sink. Bayside windows shatter under the onslaught,
doors burst from their hinges. The water snatches people off quays and sidewalks and drowns all their cries and prayers.

But it hears those drowning prayers too.

Throughout the city fires are doused, but rocks and cinder still rain, and wave after wave of ash blots out the sky. Buildings
crumble beneath the weight of ejecta, piling stone upon stone over their unlucky occupants. If it cannot burn the city, the
mountain means to bury it, to wipe out all trace of those who in their hubris bound it.

And that, the river decides, will not happen. Not to her namesake, this curiosity of men nestled in her delta, the home of
the daughter who set her free. The daughter prays; the mother listens.

And as the mountain renews its offense, the river rises and enfolds the city in her arms.

Dawn never came.

From the tower beside the ruined dam, Isyllt and Asheris watched the mountain burn. Ash drifted past the window like gray
snow. Eventually she slept, lulled by the roar of the river and the warmth of Asheris’s shoulder. When she woke her head was
on his thigh and the darkness hadn’t brightened. The murk hid the mountain, giving only the occasional sullen flash of orange.
The sky to the south was the yellowish gray of necrotic flesh.

“What time is it?” Her voice was a croak, throat raw and lips cracking. Her eyelids scraped as she blinked.

“Afternoon,” he said, his own voice rough. “Or it ought to be.”

Golden witchlights blossomed over their heads, driving away the gloom. Dirt smeared Asheris’s face and clothes and itched
on Isyllt’s skin. When she scratched her cheek her nails came back black with grime; it dulled her ring, hid the diamond’s
fire and clogged the setting.

Her left arm was numb, wedged between her and the floor. Her elbow creaked when she straightened it, and the rush of blood
to her ruined hand made her eyes water. But it didn’t hurt as much as it should. Wincing, she eased her tattered sleeve back.
The print of Asheris’s hand circled her wrist like a shackle gall, char-black and flaking in the middle, seeping raw flesh
beneath. The edges were pink and blistered, hot and painful enough leave a sour taste in her mouth, but she couldn’t feel
the worst parts. At least the ashen air had clogged her nose enough that she couldn’t smell the burnt-pork reek of it.

She’d seen burns like this before, knew the infection sure to follow in one as filthy as this. She might have another day
before the fever set in. The bandage on her palm was foul with blood and soot, and she didn’t want to imagine the state of
that wound.

“Wait here,” Asheris said and left the room, brushing futilely at the dirt on his coat.

Another tremor came while he was gone, rumbling softly through the stones. Isyllt tensed as dust sifted down from the ceiling,
but nothing else gave way. He returned a few moments later with a length of linen and a brandy decanter.

“The pipes are broken,” he said as he crouched beside her. “No clean water.”

She picked up the brandy, smearing the glass. “Is this for the burn or for me?”

Asheris frowned, lifting her arm carefully to peer at the burn. “Internal application would be better, I think.”

He took the bottle from her and doused a corner of the cloth, wiped his fingers clean. She sighed as the smell filled the
air, caramel-sweet and stinging the back of her nose. The sting was worse when she took a sip, not just in her sinuses but
in the tiny cracks and cuts in her lips. The first swallow went down bitter with blood and char; the second numbed her tongue
and coated her throat in sweet fire. Reluctantly, she set the bottle down after a third drink. The alcohol and the rush of
the waterfall only reminded her how thirsty she was.

Asheris wrapped the burn loosely and rigged a sling. His eyes glittered in the witchlit gloom. Not the copper-red flash of
an animal’s, but a crystalline sparkle like a flame behind amber.

“Who are you, really?” she asked as he tied the last knot.

“I’m Asheris, now.” He rocked back on his heels and raised a hand, palm up. “This is more than just a prison, or a skin. I
have his memories, his loves, his life.”

“And before?”

“This tongue couldn’t pronounce my old name, and it’s lost to me anyway.” He chuckled. “We were well matched, Asheris-the-man
and the jinn I was. I doubt their trap would have worked as well otherwise. Both so very curious, so incautious. The Emperor’s
mages plied the man with wine and the jinn with incense, but it was that curiosity, that desire to know the
other
, that bespelled us long enough for their chains and stones to bind.” He touched his throat, rubbed the unscarred flesh.

Isyllt didn’t look at her ring, but she felt its weight keenly. “What will you do now?”

His smile sharpened for a moment. “Find some old colleagues. Imran wasn’t the only one who cast that spell. And I worry they
may have tried it again.”

An army of bound jinn. Isyllt shuddered at the thought and Asheris nodded. “I won’t let them. After that—” He shrugged. “I
don’t know. But first, I think we should leave the tower. The earth hasn’t settled yet—you slept through several tremors before
that last, and I suspect more will come.”

He rose, taking her elbow to help her up. “Zhirin’s bargain did something. The river has woken. Whether it was any help to
Symir, I don’t know.”

Isyllt stared at the darkness in the west, the sifting ash, the flare and flash of cinders. “Shall we find out?”

They wrapped their faces before they stepped outside, but that couldn’t stop the smell of smoke. Looking back at the tower,
she saw how lucky they’d been—the stones at the river’s edge had crumbled and the tower leaned toward the cliff. Cracks spread
across the queen’s carven face, bits of hair and cheek fallen away. Another good quake and the whole thing might topple over
the falls.

They walked at first, either out of prudence or some unspoken respect for the black-burnt sky. But the closer they grew to
the Northern Bank, the harder the way became. The earth had shifted—what had been the reedy banks of the Mir were now cliffs
taller than a man, scattered with stones and still-warm ash. The corpses of trees littered the ground, half buried in debris.
The once-gentle river thundered below. Nothing green remained.

When the ashfall rose to calf-height, they had to stop. Isyllt’s ring had begun to chill, and she could see only a few yards
into the murk, even with their witchlights. Sweat ran down her face and she scrubbed it away with her veil.

“I suppose there aren’t many people around to notice,” Asheris said to himself. An instant later his eyes flashed, and his
four wings unfurled, shining gold and cinnabar. Isyllt’s breath caught at the sight.

She stepped in close, hooking her good arm around his neck. It might be easier if he carried her, but she balked at the thought
of being cradled like a babe in arms. Instead he tightened his arms around her waist and bore them up. She winced at the strain
on her shoulder, then forgot the discomfort as the draft of his wings swirled the ash away and let her see the land below.

The Mir had shifted her bed yards to the south, leaving a swath of sooty mud bare. Gray froth tangled on the current, churned
over the now-rocky bank. As they moved south she saw the remains of villages, streets buried under dust and cinders, thatched
roofs burned away and beams like bones rising from the slag. Her ring chilled till her right hand was as numb as her left.
The ferry landing and the hill above it were gone, washed away by mud and ash—nothing remained of the dock but a few charred
splinters.